《The Crow》 Chapter 1 The night was cold and I was grumpy. My suite kept me warm, though the internal comfort system could have used a tune-up. I¡¯d been putting that off for a while now, but costs were high and vigilanty work didn¡¯t really fill your pockets. I jumped. The exosuit jumped with me and made what would at best have been a two-foot jump into a twenty-foot one. This was the most complex part. I had made the suit with my protection in mind. That was its first and primary purpose so my safety wasn¡¯t a concern. But this was a five-hundred-pound suit sailing through the air from one concrete building to another. And vigilantes, no matter how accomplished, weren¡¯t protected by the Hero¡¯s Union. We were untethered, technically free from any laws and rules, so with enough property damage, we could get labeled as criminals, if not minor villains. And that would come with an arrest warrant, a fine, and a public listing of my identity. That was unlikely for me, after all the public wasn¡¯t even aware of me. Officially, I went by The Crow and the Hero¡¯s Union had a file on me but that was the largest my name ever got. The suit pushed out a gust of air and lightened my landing to a soft thump. [Scanning Area. Stealth Mode Active.] [Incoming call from Mochi] ¡°Answer.¡± ¡°How¡¯s it looking, Burt?¡± ¡°Pretty quiet. Why? Did you send me to the wrong spot?¡± ¡°No¡­ it¡¯s something else.¡± I knew that tone. ¡°No,¡± I replied. ¡°But you didn¡¯t even hear what I sai-¡± ¡°And I don¡¯t want to. I don¡¯t know why you haven¡¯t shut that number down. I¡¯ve asked you to like fifteen times already.¡± ¡°It¡¯s your only connection to your family, and-¡± ¡°Exactly, it¡¯s my only connection to them, which I don¡¯t want.¡± ¡°Your grandma is dying!¡± ¡°....what?¡± ¡°She called and left a voicemail. She¡¯s giving up on the cancer. Doctors say she¡¯s got six months to live. She wants everyone to come to her house for Thanksgiving-¡± ¡°NO.¡± ¡°BURTON,¡± the dog yelled at me. Yes. Mochi was a dog, a talking dog who happened to live an obnoxiously long life and had a great way with computers. I¡¯d gotten her from a villain attack about four years ago, shortly after I¡¯d left my family. ¡°She¡¯s dying. And besides, this is the best thing for you. You should see her one last time at the very least.¡± I frowned. She was right. She was always right. It¡¯s amazing how emotionally intelligent a genetically manipulated Shiba Inu could be. It made me believe she was meant to be some type of hyper-intelligent pet breed for some billionaire or something, which would¡¯ve been illegal under the rules of the Hero Union. She was legally too intelligent to be kept as a pet. ¡°That¡¯s a week from now, isn¡¯t it?¡± ¡°Yes. Now focus on the mission.¡± I groaned. I¡¯d have to see them again mom, dad, grandma, and everyone else. But worse of all, I¡¯d have to see Caleb and Kayla. My ex bestfriend and ex girlfriend. The story wasn¡¯t complicated. Caleb and Kayla were young heroes who started heroing throughout high school, telling no one about their powers till they discovered each other¡¯s secret junior year. Then they proceeded to get together behind my back. Two and a half years later, it came out. They were unmasked by a villain and their story immediately set the media on fire. It was a story book romance and the world ate it up, even my family. Caleb¡¯s family was dead, taken out by a major villain when he was still a kid and my parents had practically raised him. And Kayla was a childhood friend, the daughter of my dad¡¯s best friend. I had always been stupid before that. I¡¯d have to be borderline braindead to not notice the two people closest to me routinely disappearing and hooking up behind my back. I think that was the reason my family was fine with the whole thing. I was too stupid for Kayla and I was less accomplished than Caleb, and he was like their second son. They said it was wrong but expected. That I should forgive them for what they¡¯d done. They saved people after all. They were heroes, and when weighed against all they¡¯d done I was ignorable. Fuck that. I left that day and never looked back. Well, I left that day and tried to kill myself and through a fuckton of luck, I ended up with a genius talking dog and became a genius myself. I became a wisher. That was what people with powers were called, wishers. I attacked a group of villains in a fit of suicidal rage. They would have killed me, but shortly after they caught me heroes attacked and the building started to go down. Then I stood there, shaking and afraid, begging, wishing to be smart, wishing to have been smarter, wishing to have known a way out. Then I suddenly knew how to pick locks and the talking puppy in the cage next to me suddenly knew a lot of things as well. I managed to sneak out of that place with the puppy and some loot in my hands while the villains and heroes brought the house down. That¡¯s how I got Mochi and how my life changed irreversibly for the second time within the span of a few months. The classification for that power was known as tinkers. And while our power was diverse, it was limited. Even the most well-known tinker, The Wolf, had limits to the types of enemies he could face. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. [Scanning Complete. Thirteen Hits on Facial Recognition. Five Unknown.] [One known villain. Daipherius the Flame Lord, Rank D Minor Villian. Has the capabilities of a flamethrower. WARNING. This villain has a lifetime imprisonment sentence and will not go lightly. Killing is permitted if he presents as a lethal threat. Recording is advised.] Sounds about right. Usually, the fancier the villain''s name, the weaker they were. He had a made-up name and a title. People like that were basically guys with short tempers and large lifted trucks. They were compensating for something. The black stiff wings extended out of my back as I looked down towards the scene of the crime. It was about half a mile away and it was as cliched as it could get. A small truck had its back opened while a group of men kept carrying crates out of a warehouse and into the truck. The villain, Daipherius, was keeping a lookout like a moron. I say moron because worldwide privacy laws made this a fair and legal thing that no one but the local government could investigate. Privacy Laws were the foundation of the masked lifestyle. If any nation refused to allow heroes and villains to their right of anonymity, they¡¯d be abandoned by heroes and plagued by villains. Ever since the Great Upheaval when wishers came into existence, they had never had a pleasant relationship with the government. They, or rather we, were imprisoned and experimented on by the thousands, and a lot of wishers faced untold cruelties under the hands of various governments. That was when the first world-ending disaster struck. A small kid who had been experimented on got double wishes and gained an extremely complementary power. He became too powerful to contain and he eventually busted out of prison and killed tens of millions while freeing all the other imprisoned wishers. And a lot of them followed in his footsteps, creating an army of villains. The Hero¡¯s Union eventually dealt with all that though and helped enact international laws of privacy to help any and all masked wishers maintain their secrets. And eventually, those rules trickled down to the general populace as well, guaranteeing everyone some form of anonymity. That was all to say, this guy should have just stayed hidden and hired fresh henchmen without records to do the loading. With this many criminals, anyone with facial rec would have a more than valiant reason to investigate, even me. ¡°Mochi, you know what those things are?¡± ¡°Nope. But I know those pallets. High-grade shockproof containers. They each go for about fifty grand and have a resale value of forty-five grand. And they¡¯re supposedly impossible to unlock without the correct key or equipment.¡± ¡°If they¡¯re electric could you just get a shocker to zap them out or something?¡± ¡°Not unless your shocker can create forty megawatts of power.¡± Well, that was rare, I think. ¡°How many shockers can do that?¡± ¡°Majors only and majors above C rank at that.¡± ¡°Fuck,¡± I mumbled. ¡°What?¡± ¡°Fifty thousand for the box alone means what¡¯s inside is much more valuable.¡± ¡°They could be selling the boxes.¡± ¡°No. They could sell the boxes legitimately. It is a legal product. And if it was stolen there¡¯s the local black market. Either way, pretending they¡¯re legit and dealing with a moving company would have been an easier choice. How are the drones? Any heroes? Villains?¡± ¡°No one so far. Relatively quiet night.¡± I frowned. That didn¡¯t make sense. This was a warehouse district and while it wasn¡¯t connected to the port it was still bound to have some criminals running around. I should know, I lived here. Villains weren¡¯t running amok at every hour, but you could generally hear Cobra and her crew making noise. ¡°Stealth call, Jackson.¡± [Calling Jackson. Voice changer active. Signal rerouting active. Privacy protocol active.] ¡°Man, fuck you,¡± Jackson spoke. ¡°No thanks. Don¡¯t roll that way,¡± I replied. ¡°The fuck you want anyways? Calling at two am got no damn sense do ya?¡± ¡°Cobra with you?¡± ¡°No, the fuck? She¡¯s my boss, I¡¯m only with her when I¡¯m paid to be. No more, no less.¡± ¡°Right. So you wouldn¡¯t happen to know where she is would you?¡± ¡°Man, what the fuck I look like knowin-¡± ¡°Send me her blackline.¡± There was a pause and audible breathing on the other end of the call. ¡°You want me, a henchman, to send you, a vig, my boss¡¯s contact?¡± ¡°It¡¯s either that or I tell her about all those times I caught you skimming off the top of her stash.¡± ¡°Man fuck you!¡± The line went dead. Then a few seconds later I received a message from him containing a set of characters and I saw Cobra¡¯s contact be added to my call system. Blackline was a beautiful thing. The best form of anonymous communication was originally made by a tinker back when the government hunted us down but now it was widespread and the most common form of communication. You couldn¡¯t hack it, you couldn¡¯t trace it and almost all of its process, even the hardware stuff, was run by AI. The company itself was based somewhere up on the moon and had a ludicrous amount of money to hire the strongest wisher mercenaries to defend themselves, though they were open to multiple audits of their internal systems by the Hero¡¯s Unions and various world governments. They were a lynchpin in the world economy and almost everyone relied on them in some way or another, meaning they also got their fair share of villain attacks as well, and while they could handle most of it, they did rely on the Hero¡¯s Union from time to time. Still, it was the most private form of communication, sending only audio, video, and text at their basic price. ¡°Stealth call Cobra.¡± Still, I took precautions, rerouted calls through various servers, and made myself as anonymous as I could. Not most vigs could do that. Hell, the term tinker had actually come from the word thinker. A tinker could be talented at anything, chess, chemistry, biology, physics, or even literature. I happened to be talented in the engineering and robotics department. Doing fast calculations and applying them in the moment and all that. That was all to say that I was one of the few tinkers in the masked business. Most of them build stuff or did research for major corporations. And of the tinkers in the masked business, I was one of the few in the vigilante profile. ¡°Crow,¡± a voice spoke. ¡°Cobra,¡± I replied. ¡°Jackson warned you?¡± ¡°He asked me for permission,¡± she replied. ¡°How loyal.¡± ¡°Please,¡± she snorted. Heroes and Villains were portrayed as polar opposites by the media, but that wasn¡¯t exactly the case. If a villain managed to not do too much harm and were worth less trouble captured than they were free, then they were usually left alone. Cobra was a great example of this. She was a materials dealer, mainly supplying for vigilantes and villains, but also heroes as well. And as much as she disobeyed the law, she had enough of a love for peace to fight some maniacal villains every now and again. And she was powerful and stubborn. ¡°Do you know a Daipherius by any chance?¡± ¡°Firey guy? Yeah I know him, why?¡± ¡°He moving stuff for you?¡± ¡°Please. I beat the snot out of that fuckface.¡± ¡°When?¡± ¡°Today! No news coverage though, shame. I would have loved to see his broken face all over the screen.¡± My screen zoomed into the image of the man and my eyes went to work, looking for any signs of cuts or bruises. ¡°Oh, well you have someone laying bait on your turf then.¡± ¡°Bait?¡± ¡°Yeah. Shapeshifters dressed as him moving things with high-grade pallets.¡± There was a pause. ¡°Those fucker! I told them not to move that shit on my turf!¡± She yelled. ¡°Call your Union contact and tell em there¡¯s a Major D if not a Major C threat at your location and send me the location right now!¡± ¡°Why? Whats-¡± ¡°A smuggling ring dealing with shit I didn¡¯t want on my turf decided to run it through here anyway. Bastards probably knew I¡¯d gun for that firey fuck¡¯s face as soon as I saw it. They were trying to take me out, probably some Major Ds hiding out in waiting. Fucking pricks.¡± Uh-oh. Chapter 2 I slept until about three am. By then both Mochi and Kimber had fled to their own beds and I was the only one left laying on the couch. I was still in my work clothes. A thin white shirt and some basketball shorts. I should take a shower. I hadn¡¯t been out for long but I never really felt clean without one. I went to the bathroom, catching a glimpse of myself along the way. My dreads were getting a bit long, maybe I should go in for a retwist soon. That thought soured my face. I¡¯d always had a woman in my life for hair retwists, whether that was my mom or Kayla but now, I¡¯d have to look up an appointment with someone. I could just leave it be, but it had already been five years, and I didn¡¯t want to see my grandma all raggedy like this. I¡¯d gotten a bit lighter, but that was barely noticeable. I was black and while I would have gotten a nice glow from being outside during the day, I worked mostly during the night. Thirty minutes later I was clean and in bed. Then my phone buzzed. Mike: Got time to talk? Me: No, why? Mike: Big stuff. Real Big stuff. Me: What? Mike: I really don¡¯t want to type this out. Me: Too bad. Mike: You¡¯re getting about fifteen grand in total. And we have a Hero who wants to meet with you, a big one. He said he¡¯ll meet you tomorrow night at midnight on top of the warehouse from last night. Me: No Mike: Not a guy you can say no to kid. Me: What¡¯s that supposed to mean? Mike: Just find him or he¡¯ll find you, whether you like it or not. Me: You¡¯re acting like this guy¡¯s the wolf or something. Then there was a minute-long pause, one that I didn¡¯t like the implications of. I didn¡¯t text too many people nowadays, but I still knew hesitation over text. Me: Mike, it¡¯s not the Wolf, is it? Mike: Just be there. Me: Is it Airborn or Tank? Mike: No, just be there Me: So you¡¯ll confirm it¡¯s not Airborn or Tank but you won¡¯t confirm whether or not it¡¯s the Wolf? I didn¡¯t get a reply. ¡°What the fuck!¡± Mochi walked into the room a few minutes later, but the poor dog forgot why and just jumped into the bed and went to sleep. Kimber followed shortly after. And I, well I couldn¡¯t sleep. I might be meeting the Wolf, the Hound. There was a reason why he was called that, and it wasn¡¯t because he had chosen the name. Sure his costume resembled a dog motif but he hadn¡¯t named himself the Wolf. His enemies had. He was the official hero of New York City and Chicago. He had started in New York but his sidekicks had become powerful in their own right and taken over there, then he moved to Chicago and did the same. He had been around for nearly two hundred years and he was still in the game. He was one of the first wishers and it was a known fact that their powers tended to be far more powerful than the newer generations. He wasn¡¯t particularly strong or scary, about as scary as a tinker could be putting him around Major A class in terms of power. Well, that was pushing it. Major A¡¯s could wipe out half a megacity and while he could technically bomb half the city away, in terms of accessible combat power he was around a Major C at best. But he knew. He always knew. He knew almost anything and everything and it was said that once the Wolf howls, you go to him or he¡¯ll find you. He also led a lot of the Hero Union up until a couple of decades ago, when he officially stepped down and the Lioness took over. He was a myth, a legend. The guy your mom warned you about. ¡®If you don¡¯t eat your veggies I''m gonna call the Wolf.¡¯ You were afraid of him the same way you were afraid of the boogie man. But the difference was that the Wolf never stopped being real. Why the fuck would a guy like that want to talk to me? Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. I thought about barraging Mike, but he might¡¯ve already been in trouble for slipping up and letting me deduce the whole thing. ¡°It might not be the Wolf. It might be some other guy,¡± I mumbled. But it probably wasn¡¯t. It wasn¡¯t. Seven hours later, I was sitting on the ground while a tangle of robotic limbs worked their way through my hair. Mochi sat on the couch and her service dog vest had opened up like fancy car doors to reveal eighteen thin spindly electronic arms. That, along with the helmet was probably the most expensive piece of machinery in this place. The helmet had been custom-made by another tinker who specialized in biology and robotics. It was a sensor, one that would normally be used for paralyzed patients to be able to move and direct their robotic arms. But it had been custom-fitted for Mochi and her dog-shaped head. The guy had been weirded out by it when I had first approached but I just claimed to be a middleman for a very rich guy who wanted to give his pet dog hands. A scan of Mochi¡¯s skull and two hundred grand later, we were sent this beautiful piece of tech. But that was beside the point. The point was Mochi wanted to try her robotic little knuckles at a retwist. She watched about ten instructional videos and then suddenly believed herself to be an expert. I brought out my hair oils, which seemed to be the hardest part for the robotic appendages so Mochi had to wear makeshift gloves. In hindsight, I probably could have done this myself. No, I definitely could have done this myself, I just chose not to. At worst, I could cut it all off anyway. I¡¯d long since stopped caring about my appearance. But surprisingly, Mochi did a good job. Then I had to spend an hour cleaning out her robotic limbs from oil and hair, but it was fine. I had nice hair and she had clean, shiny robot limbs. ¡°Let me clean that helmet too Mochi,¡± I said, reaching for her head. She let out a little whine. She hated going without the helmet. ¡°I¡¯ll be quick.¡± She whined again. I reached over and slowly lifted the helmet off her head. I knew why she didn¡¯t like going without it. I had gotten the thing custom-made for comfort for a reason. Losing the helmet was like losing her limbs to Mochi. Normally, with the helmet, she could feel each robotic arm, and its position and guide them to where she wanted them to go. But then, for an instant, she was limbless and that terrified her. And since the helmet and the arms were waterproof, she even cleaned herself with them on. I quickly wiped it down and gave it back to her. Then apologized for a bit as she whined and shook her head for the next few minutes. I ended up cooking bacon and eggs for the both of us, which got her to calm down almost right away. ¡°I might be meeting the Wolf tonight.¡± ¡°Wha--¡± She immediately started coughing up her food, coughed it up, then licked it up, then looked back at me. ¡°WHAT? The Wolf? As in the legendary Hero? One of the first wishers? The man who set up the Hero¡¯s Union, Wolf?¡± I nodded. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°Don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°When?¡± ¡°Tonight, at midnight.¡± ¡°But- but- why?¡± I shrugged and both of us waded in the thought for a moment. ¡°Maybe he wants to arrest you.¡± ¡°If the Wolf wanted to arrest me, then I¡¯d be arrested.¡± ¡°Then what do you think he wants,¡± Mochi asked. ¡°Something about the fight. I sent all my drone footage but he might want my suit footage as well.¡± ¡°Do you want me to get the file ready on a flash drive for him?¡± Mochi asked. ¡°Yeah. Also, I think I¡¯ll take off west around eight and then fly in at midnight. I have stealth tech but it definitely isn¡¯t enough to fool him. It¡¯s no invisibility.¡± It¡¯s true. My suit had some camo abilities but that was general color change, nothing detailed. I also had my drones doing regular recon and locating all the security cameras around here. Most people didn¡¯t have them to open. Villains, vigilantes, and even heroes were known to smash in unnecessary cameras. That was the thing with power suits, you had what you could afford. My suit was a bit bulky but all I did was fly around and shoot target missiles. And even then, I had to buy missile parts, fuel, solar panels, and batteries. Otherwise, all anyone needed to do to figure out my secret identity would be to look at my electric bill. I was trying to upgrade to a plasma core, meaning I could replace my fan-based engines and have plasma thrust instead, which would be quieter and faster. And if I get the right type, I could ditch missiles and go with plasma shooters. There were a lot of tinkers on the hero and villain side of the business, but vigilantes didn¡¯t make enough money to be tinkers. Tinkers needed things and things cost money. One power armored tinker said he spent about one hundred thousand per month on just equipment alone. He was a Major C hero. But I had no such delusions. If I could make more than a hundred grand per month, I¡¯d work for a year and retire. There were other jobs that could keep a man like me afloat. I thought about quitting sometimes, maybe signing up as a registered tinker and getting a job at a major corporation. Walking around in a white lab coat, designing some state-of-the-art tech maybe. But that all sounded like a bad time. A lot of work and reading and other stuff I didn¡¯t like. Why build something if I can¡¯t use it? Then the day got started. I tried to distract myself. I did maintenance on my suite, reloaded, and rechecked my ammo. I even browsed the black market for a time. I normally bought stuff through Cobra but there was a local in-person market right by my neighborhood that I could visit. I¡¯d avoided going there for a while now. I¡¯d seen Caleb in costume, buying something from a local tinker. Caleb and Kayla, professionally known as QuickNick and PunchStar. One was a speedster and the other had generic super strength and durability. They still had their secret identities for the most part. The media never actually reported on unmasked villains, but their close family and friends had learned about their secrets, and back then, that included me. But their story as secret lovers in both their planes-cloth and hero identity did sell well. They must have made hundreds of thousands at least. I was mostly over it, but seeing them in person was a different thing. Next Thursday was going to be annoying. Chapter 3 I slept until about three am. By then both Mochi and Kimber had fled to their own beds and I was the only one left laying on the couch. I was still in my work clothes. A thin white shirt and some basketball shorts. I should take a shower. I hadn¡¯t been out for long but I never really felt clean without one. I went to the bathroom, catching a glimpse of myself along the way. My dreads were getting a bit long, maybe I should go in for a retwist soon. That thought soured my face. I¡¯d always had a woman in my life for hair retwists, whether that was my mom or Kayla but now, I¡¯d have to look up an appointment with someone. I could just leave it be, but it had already been five years, and I didn¡¯t want to see my grandma all raggedy like this. I¡¯d gotten a bit lighter, but that was barely noticeable. I was black and while I would have gotten a nice glow from being outside during the day, I worked mostly during the night. Thirty minutes later I was clean and in bed. Then my phone buzzed. Mike: Got time to talk? Me: No, why? Mike: Big stuff. Real Big stuff. Me: What? Mike: I really don¡¯t want to type this out. Me: Too bad. Mike: You¡¯re getting about fifteen grand in total. And we have a Hero who wants to meet with you, a big one. He said he¡¯ll meet you tomorrow night at midnight on top of the warehouse from last night. Me: No Mike: Not a guy you can say no to kid. Me: What¡¯s that supposed to mean? Mike: Just find him or he¡¯ll find you, whether you like it or not. Me: You¡¯re acting like this guy¡¯s the wolf or something. Then there was a minute-long pause, one that I didn¡¯t like the implications of. I don¡¯t text too many people nowadays, but I still knew hesitation over text. Me: Mike, it¡¯s not the Wolf, is it? Mike: Just be there. Me: Is it Airborn or Tank? Mike: No, just be there Me: So you¡¯ll confirm it¡¯s not Airborn or Tank but you won¡¯t confirm whether or not it¡¯s the Wolf? I didn¡¯t get a reply. ¡°What the fuck!¡± Mochi walked into the room a few minutes later, but the poor dog forgot why and just jumped into the bed and went to sleep. Kimber followed shortly after. And I, well I couldn¡¯t sleep. I might be meeting the Wolf, the Hound. There was a reason why he was called that, and it wasn¡¯t because he had chosen the name. Sure his costume resembled a dog motif but he hadn¡¯t named himself the Wolf. His enemies had. He was the official hero of New York City and Chicago. He had started in New York but his sidekicks had become powerful in their own right and taken over there, then he moved to Chicago and did the same. He had been around for nearly two hundred years and he was still in the game. He was one of the first wishers and it was a known fact that their powers tended to be far more powerful than the newer generations. He wasn¡¯t particularly strong or scary, about as scary as a tinker could be putting him around Major A class in terms of power. Well, that was pushing it. Major A¡¯s could wipe out half a megacity and while he could technically bomb half the city away, in terms of accessible combat power he was around a Major C at best. But he knew. He always knew. He knew almost anything and everything and it was said that once the Wolf howls, you go to him or he¡¯ll find you. He also led a lot of the Hero Union up until a couple of decades ago, when he officially stepped down and the Lioness took over. He was a myth, a legend. The guy your mom warned you about. ¡®If you don¡¯t eat your veggies I''m gonna call the Wolf.¡¯ You were afraid of him the same way you were afraid of the boogie man. But the difference was that the Wolf never stopped being real. Why the fuck would a guy like that want to talk to me? I thought about barraging Mike, but he might¡¯ve already been in trouble for slipping up and letting me deduce the whole thing. ¡°It might not be the Wolf. It might be some other guy,¡± I mumbled. But it probably wasn¡¯t. It wasn¡¯t. Seven hours later, I was sitting on the ground while a tangle of robotic limbs worked their way through my hair. Mochi sat on the couch and her service dog vest had opened up like fancy car doors to reveal eighteen thin spindly electronic arms. That, along with the helmet was probably the most expensive piece of machinery in this place. The helmet had been custom-made by another tinker who specialized in biology and robotics. It was a sensor, one that would normally be used for paralyzed patients to be able to move and direct their robotic arms. But it had been custom-fitted for Mochi and her dog-shaped head. The guy had been weirded out by it when I had first approached but I just claimed to be a middleman for a very rich guy who wanted to give his pet dog hands. A scan of Mochi¡¯s skull and two hundred grand later, we were sent this beautiful piece of tech. But that was beside the point. The point was Mochi wanted to try her robotic little knuckles at a retwist. She watched about ten instructional videos and then suddenly believed herself to be an expert. I brought out my hair oils, which seemed to be the hardest part for the robotic appendages so Mochi had to wear makeshift gloves. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. In hindsight, I probably could have done this myself. No, I definitely could have done this myself, I just chose not to. At worst, I could cut it all off anyway. I¡¯d long since stopped caring about my appearance. But surprisingly, Mochi did a good job. Then I had to spend an hour cleaning out her robotic limbs from oil and hair, but it was fine. I had nice hair and she had clean, shiny robot limbs. ¡°Let me clean that helmet too Mochi,¡± I said, reaching for her head. She let out a little whine. She hated going without the helmet. ¡°I¡¯ll be quick.¡± She whined again. I reached over and slowly lifted the helmet off her head. I knew why she didn¡¯t like going without it. I had gotten the thing custom-made for comfort for a reason. Losing the helmet was like losing her limbs to Mochi. Normally, with the helmet, she could feel each robotic arm, and its position and guide them to where she wanted them to go. But then, for an instant, she was limbless and that terrified her. And since the helmet and the arms were waterproof, she even cleaned herself with them on. I quickly wiped it down and gave it back to her. Then apologized for a bit as she whined and shook her head for the next few minutes. I ended up cooking bacon and eggs for the both of us, which got her to calm down almost right away. ¡°I might be meeting the Wolf tonight.¡± ¡°Wha--¡± She immediately started coughing up her food, coughed it up, then licked it up, then looked back at me. ¡°WHAT? The Wolf? As in the legendary Hero? One of the first wishers? The man who set up the Hero¡¯s Union, Wolf?¡± I nodded. ¡°Why?¡± ¡°Don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°When?¡± ¡°Tonight, at midnight.¡± ¡°But- but- why?¡± I shrugged and both of us waded in the thought for a moment. ¡°Maybe he wants to arrest you.¡± ¡°If the Wolf wanted to arrest me, then I¡¯d be arrested.¡± ¡°Then what do you think he wants,¡± Mochi asked. ¡°Something about the fight. I sent all my drone footage but he might want my suit footage as well.¡± ¡°Do you want me to get the file ready on a flash drive for him?¡± Mochi asked. ¡°Yeah. Also, I think I¡¯ll take off west around eight and then fly in at midnight. I have stealth tech but it definitely isn¡¯t enough to fool him. It¡¯s no invisibility.¡± It¡¯s true. My suit had some camo abilities but that was a general color change, nothing detailed. I also had my drones doing regular recon and locating all the security cameras around here. Most people didn¡¯t have them to open. Villains, vigilantes, and even heroes were known to smash in unnecessary cameras. That was the thing with power suits, you had what you could afford. My suit was a bit bulky but all I did was fly around and shoot target missiles. And even then, I had to buy missile parts, fuel, solar panels, and batteries. Otherwise, all anyone needed to do to figure out my secret identity would be to look at my electric bill. I was trying to upgrade to a plasma core, meaning I could replace my fan-based engines and have plasma thrust instead, which would be quieter and faster. And if I get the right type, I could ditch missiles and go with plasma shooters. There were a lot of tinkers on the hero and villain side of the business, but vigilantes didn¡¯t make enough money to be tinkers. Tinkers needed things and things cost money. One power armored tinker said he spent about one hundred thousand per month on just equipment alone. He was a Major C hero. But I had no such delusions. If I could make more than a hundred grand per month, I¡¯d work for a year and retire. There were other jobs that could keep a man like me afloat. I thought about quitting sometimes, maybe signing up as a registered tinker and getting a job at a major corporation. Walking around in a white lab coat, designing some state-of-the-art tech maybe. But that all sounded like a bad time. A lot of work and reading and other stuff I didn¡¯t like. Why build something if I can¡¯t use it? Then the day got started. I tried to distract myself. I did maintenance on my suite, reloaded, and rechecked my ammo. I even browsed the black market for a time. I normally bought stuff through Cobra but there was a local in-person market right by my neighborhood that I could visit. I¡¯d avoided going there for a while now. I¡¯d seen Caleb in costume, buying something from a local tinker. Caleb and Kayla, professionally known as QuickNick and PunchStar. One was a speedster and the other had generic super strength and durability. They still had their secret identities for the most part. The media never actually reported on unmasked villains, but their close family and friends had learned about their secrets, and back then, that included me. But their story as secret lovers in both their planes-cloth and hero identity did sell well. They must have made hundreds of thousands at least. I was mostly over it, but seeing them in person was a different thing. Next Thursday was going to be annoying. Chapter 4 I was done with everything by three pm, so I took a nap and flew south at six. Thankfully, the most expensive part of my suit was my battery. I could fly around in this thing for fifty hours straight and I still wouldn¡¯t go past half my battery reserves. But flying around was boring. I saw some criminals, some guying trying to mug a woman, and some dude selling hard drugs. Those didn¡¯t pay, they were local crimes, but I stopped and reported the mugging and called the cops on the drug dealer, watching them arrest him, just in case he was a wisher and busted out with something. ¡°I think that drug dealer is working for the local villain of this area. Whimshiemer, he¡¯s a chemist tinker who fabricates addictive substance for cheap.¡± ¡°Is he dangerous?¡± ¡°No,¡± Mochi replied. ¡°He¡¯s actually a bit of a coward. Always manages to hide his location and has only been seen masked a handful of times.¡± ¡°What¡¯s his crew like?¡± ¡°A few pyros, one strongman, and an animal communicator.¡± ¡°An animal communicator?¡± ¡°Yeah, they use the local wildlife as recon and hideout when things get crazy.¡± ¡°Sort of like drones?¡± ¡°Exactly like drones, except with much more of them and no way to tell if they¡¯re drones!¡± I flew around for a good while longer. Every area had a local hero and villain. They changed and migrated over the years but all the locals generally knew and kept up with their local hero politics. Some of the safer areas only had some small time guy, like this one. There were drugs, but little violence and the hero rarely had to do anything to keep the area safe. ¡°How much do you think he gets paid to protect this place? Five thousand a week? Ten thousand?¡± ¡°That is the going rate for Major F rank heroes, no?¡± ¡°Just seems like a lot for someplace so quiet. Does that whimsy guy have and bounty?¡± ¡°No. He doesn¡¯t make much locally. I think he just ships stuff out of the area for other places.¡± ¡°Does he do rocket fuel?¡± ¡°Yeah, but basic primitive stuff. He mostly manufactures drugs.¡± ¡°Sounds dangerous. Why hasn¡¯t the union put out a bounty on him? He not only produces drugs but weapons as well?¡± ¡°They don¡¯t know his buyers. The local heroes haven¡¯t even seen him face to face.¡± That was smart. Can¡¯t come after you if you weren¡¯t known in the first place. There were many types of villains, some violent, others less so. But suppliers were a weary bunch, often hiding and sneaking around to make their sales. And the Union took a particularly hard stance against them depending on what they made and to who they sold to. Eventually, I perched on top of an old church and turned my camo on. It didn¡¯t make me invisible, but the coating on my suit would change to match the general color of my surroundings. The world of wishers was very different from the normal world. Cops didn¡¯t deal with wishers. Powered individuals could go through tens, if not hundreds of regular people easily, so fighting and governing them was left up to the Hero¡¯s Union. The cops would deal with the normal criminals and heroes would deal with the supernatural ones. And as ridiculous as that sounded, it worked. Wishers, on average, weren¡¯t suicidal. We could be greedy, or needy, but we tended to be much less self-destructive than normal folk. Maybe that was because we had more to lose. Or maybe it was because our one wish had been granted by whatever supernatural force governed this universe. Either way, we had a somewhat different psychological profile than the rest of humanity. So most wishers, including villains, valued life and freedom. That meant most villains were less ¡®world-ending nuclear bombs¡¯ and more ¡®secret underworld bosses.¡¯ They wanted longivety and profitability. And if one of their own threatened that stability, they¡¯d go after them like Cobra had last night. Eventually, midnight came close. ¡°Mochi, I¡¯m going to disconnect, just in case he hacks me and traces the call somehow.¡± ¡°Aww come on!¡± ¡°Sorry, I gotta take precautions.¡± Though if the Hound wanted to find me, I doubted I¡¯d be able to stop him. I doubted anyone could. My wings spread open and I flew back, passing over my home and circling the area of last night¡¯s debacuale for a few minutes. I ran my sensors trying to see if I could spot anyone, but got nothing back aside from late night warehouse workers and the usual henchmen lurking about. ¡°You gonna come down?¡± A voice spoke, almost as if it was next to my ear. I looked down and saw him. The Wolf. The Hound. Nobody really knew what he looked like. You got half pictures here and there but he rarely made any official media visits, that was mostly left to the Lioness and Paragon. I¡¯d seen a lot of internet pictures of him, most of them old and degraded but I recognized the outfit he wore from some of them. He was tall, easily over six feet and his face was covered by a strange wolf-like mask. His cape was long, almost tarp-like and it floated about ten feet behind him. It floated gently behind him, making him look like a half-manifest wolf monster or something. If you had told me this was some type of beastly grower or fucked up giant monster wolf, I probably would have believed you. I slowly descended to the rooftop, making sure to keep my eyes on the man, even though that wouldn¡¯t do much. ¡°You¡¯re the Crow.¡± It wasn¡¯t a question. ¡°I am,¡± my voice cracked. ¡°And you''re the Wolf.¡± ¡°I am.¡± ¡°Uhm. Great. What can I uh do for you?¡± They sounded pretentious. ¡°Not that you need anything from me. It was just you were the one who wanted to talk, at least according to Mike.¡± ¡°You were on site yesterday when you discovered this place, right?¡± I nodded. ¡°I need any extra footage you have of the incident, including before and after the fight.¡± ¡°Yeah, sure. I have it all right here,¡± I answered, pulling out the flash drive and tossing it to him. ¡°Is that all?¡± ¡°No,¡± The Wolf replied. ¡°How many years have you worked in this area.¡± ¡°About five,¡± I answered. ¡°And Cobra? How long has she been running things here?¡± ¡°Almost ten years I think, why?¡± ¡°She normally runs light stuff, right?¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± I nodded. ¡°She stores a lot of weed and advanced tech, no weaponry though, and no hard drugs.¡± You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. ¡°You buy from her?¡± ¡°Ugh¡­ yeah? Batteries and software mostly.¡± I gulped and hoped he didn¡¯t hear it. Then he just kept staring at me ¡°People?¡± The Wolf growled. ¡°What? No. She has a very firm policy of walking that grey line between full-on villain and vig. She¡¯s the type to value her freedom over money anyway. And she sounded super freaked out when I called her about-¡± ¡°You called her?¡± ¡°Yeah, about Dia-¡± ¡°Did you record it?¡± ¡°Uh¡­ yeah. Do you want that to?¡± The wolf nodded, which was terrifying. I plugged in the stick to a port on my suit and manually transfered over the recording of the call, the one with Mike as well. Then I threw the stick at the Wolf, who seemed to catch in so fast the stick disappeared. The Wolf nodded. ¡°Tell no one,¡± he growled. ¡°I¡¯ll know if you do.¡± And just with that, before I could reply, he disappeared. ¡°What the hell was that?¡± I wasn¡¯t invincible. I knew that. I wasn¡¯t stupid, at least not anymore. I could be tracked and hunted. The Wolf could probably have my identity within the hour he was willing to worm his way around some privacy laws. So I kept a low profile. Recon work was half my money. Figure out where the crime is, and if I wasn¡¯t able to handle it, call in the guys who could. I was smart about it. I tried to be smart about everything nowadays. But there wasn¡¯t much I could do about the Wolf. But maybe there was something else. Every area had its heros and villians, even rural ones. Supers had wormed their way into the very heart of most cultures nowadays. From neighborhood to neighborhood, you¡¯d see certain villains, vigs, and heroes. The way they were treated was based on their crimes. An invisible drug dealer who only sells weed to local high schoolers? No one would probably know he existed. An invisible guy who got too touchy with women? He¡¯d be dead within a few days. Sexual crimes were the highway to getting a Kill Order set on you by the Hero¡¯s Union. But for the Wolf to start asking about the area? For Cobra, who loved her personal freedom more than anything else to call in heroes? That hinted at something far greater. Human trafficking was what the Wolf had implied but those crates weren¡¯t designed for humans. Animals maybe? I leaned back into my chair, my mind still racing in thought. It was now Thanksgiving Day and I¡¯d been going over the problem over and over again for the past week. Mostly because whatever it was might mean money. But it also served as a distraction from this day, the day that I had been dreading. ¡°Let¡¯s go!¡± Mochi yelled with her leash on her in her mouth. ¡°Let¡¯s go! Let¡¯s go! Let¡¯s go!¡± She started spinning in circles and sending her leash spiraling around her. ¡°Okay, okay,¡± I grumbled, pushing myself up with my cane. I hadn¡¯t seen my family in over five years. When the whole debacle with Mochi had happened, I hadn¡¯t reached out even then. I¡¯d seen my grandma a few times a year since the cancer diagnosis but everyone else was basically dead to me. I walked out to the garage giving Kimber a goodbye pet as I left. Mochi was coming with me, for emotional support. She wore a collar that prevented her from speaking, one she¡¯d designed for the times she was out in public. I had a translator in my ear and a fat frown on my face as I strapped on the leash and took my time petting her down. ¡°Come on, it won¡¯t be that bad!¡± Mochi mumbled I slowly pat her head. I loved this dog, this beautiful smart innocent creature. But all she knew of family was Hallmark movies and cartoons. It was said that people project, accusing others of the worst qualities they carried. Mochi¡¯s worst quality was snagging some food off my plate when I wasn¡¯t looking. I don¡¯t think she could understand something like this. She was smart and comforting, but she was still a kid, or a puppy I suppose. Actually, I didn¡¯t know if dogs ever emotionally matured. ¡°Let¡¯s just get this over with,¡± I replied. I opened the old car door and Mochi hoped on through to the passenger side. I put myself in and put my cane between us. Mochi whined one of those sad dog whines. I reached over and petted her down. ¡°We don¡¯t have to go ya know. We can stay home,¡± she whispered. ¡°Nah, we have to go. Grandma¡¯s dying. Wp 0e don¡¯t really have a choice.¡± And with that, I turned on the old car and slowly put it in reverse. The garage door automatically opened and I watched it close as I drove out o the street. The drive there was as anxious as could be. I was seeing streets I hadn¡¯t seen in years, passing through neighborhoods I partially recognized. It was all familiar but all new at the same time. When I say I¡¯d been stupid, that hadn¡¯t been in the lightest terms. I was a straight C¡¯s student at best, and that was while taking the easiest classes in school and studying a decent amount. College was never an option and my plans for the future consisted of anything that didn¡¯t require me to use my head too much. I''m exaggerating a little. The point is that I was a little dumber than the rest of the people around me. And intelligence affected the way you saw things. I¡¯d put it together a while back but driving past all these pretty built houses and architectural buildings, it really hit me. My family was rich. This was the type of suburb that sitcoms would record for an outside house. The type of neighborhood you¡¯d see in movies and wonder, ¡®I wonder how those kids'' parents can afford all of that?¡¯ My dad was a doctor in one of the most prestigious hospitals within the city. My mom owned a small chain restaurant, one that had been given to her by my grandma after my grandpa¡¯s death. They were millionaires, easily. Being a vig meant you saw all types of settings. Criminals existed everywhere. Having seen and fought in some crack dens and lived in a shady warehouse district, I couldn¡¯t help but feel envy. This place just screamed money. I drove down the streets and parked my car on the curb. I saw something buzzing by in the distance, but I pretended not to notice it. I guess he was the lookout. I sighed and pushed open the door. Mochi followed right behind me. And with that, I closed the door and walked over to Grandma¡¯s house. Chapter 5 I had been here a couple of months ago. Grams had been diagnosed with cancer shortly after my break up. And while she hadn¡¯t chosen sides initially, I had cut her off for not siding with me. Cancer changed that. Now I visited once a month, once every other month if I could help it. The tall three story house was huge. I remembered loving this place and coming here almost every weekend to play hide and seek with Nick and Kayla. I remembered many Christmases, many Thanksgivings, and one memorial. Overall this was a place of joy in my head. But now it was the opposite. I grumbled and walked up the steps. Mochi followed behind me. I raised my cane and knocked on the stained oak door with my handle. They took a moment, about seven seconds to come and open the door. ¡°Hello, oh-¡± I walked inside, avoiding the false surprise on my mother''s face. ¡°Bur- Burton?¡± ¡°What?¡± I asked. ¡°I- well- it¡¯s just-It¡¯s been so long and I-¡± ¡°I¡¯ve got nothing to say to you,¡± I cut in. Then I went down the hall, glaring at any kid that tried to touch Mochi, and went straight to the living room. There grandma sat. She looked the same, but different. Cancer treatment has gone a lot further than plain old chemo nowadays. There were target nanites, organ replacement, and even genetic reconstruction. But age was age, and the older you got the more your body withered. You could replace your lungs and even your heart and eyes. But the older you got, the more everything broke down. My grandmother, Meredith Savannah Greens was one hundred and twenty years old, and she had a tumor in her head. ¡°Hey Nana, how are you?¡± I said to her. ¡°Oh I¡¯m fine boy, a lot better than you are with that stick of yours,¡± she smiled. Faces don¡¯t age, not if you see them enough. You just don¡¯t notice things like a few new wrinkles or slightly sagier skin. But I hadn¡¯t been seeing Nana every day, only once a few months. And now I was starting to deeply regret that. ¡°Burton,¡± someone said with a touch of my shoulder. I instantly pulled away. It was my mom again. This time there was visible pain. ¡°Burton I- we wanted to talk to you.¡± I frowned. ¡°What about?¡± You¡¯d think I¡¯m nasty huh? Staring my own mother in the face while she tears up in pain and feeling nothing but annoyance. But honestly, I was being kinder than she deserved. There was a culture around superheroes and powered individuals. They saved people. They stopped villains. They got what they wanted. Hero worship in the most literal sense. But if it had started and ended there, then maybe I could accept it. I¡¯d at least be willing to talk to my family once in a while. But that wasn¡¯t it. In hindsight, Kayla and Nick were the straw that broke the camel''s back, or the brick in their case. But I wasn¡¯t here to deal with bad parents or spoiled siblings, bad friends, or cheating girlfriends. I wasn¡¯t here to make up and I certainly wasn¡¯t here to forgive. I was here to mourn. ¡°About¡­ everything honey. We wanted to apologize and come together-¡± ¡°No,¡± I cut in. ¡°But-¡± ¡°Leave him alone Annie,¡± Nana cut in. ¡°I told ya he wasn¡¯t here for that.¡± ¡°But-¡± Nana gave my mother one of those deathly glares my mother had raised me with. My mother nodded and turned away. The truth was, my parents weren¡¯t the worst. There hadn¡¯t been any beatings or horrible words, only neglect and blatant favoritism. My siblings frowned at me from a ways off. Doctor, lawyer, engineer, and CEO. They all looked good. My father had forced them to be active in their younger years, instilling good habits in each of them from a young age. Me, not so much. He let me stay home and play video games all day. They¡¯d gone fishing, camping, hunting, all without me. Eventually, my grandparents noticed it, and that was when Grampa got involved. He made me hang out at his shop all day, picking me up and teaching me about cars even when I didn¡¯t want to. He¡¯d made me get a mechanic¡¯s license even when I didn¡¯t want to, and he had even paid me to study. And then he had left me the shop. He hoped I would use it and start my own business, but it was also an expensive piece of property. He taught me how to sell it and how to invest. And more than anyone else in the world, Grampa had cared about me. His giving me the shop had pissed off half the family, but he had made Nana promise to go along with it, and she had. After getting smarter, I realized more things than I cared to think about. But I couldn¡¯t ignore my past now, not when it was standing right in front of me. I walked over to the couch and sat down, right next to Nana. Mochi zipped over and sat next to me. I leaned back and breathed for a second. I was tired. I could fly around in my exosuit for hours without trouble, but give me five minutes with people and I was drained. Mochi leaned against me and sighed. I put my hand on her back and pet her. She looked over to a hallway and barked. I looked in the same direction and rolled my eyes. ¡°He doesn¡¯t bite, does he?¡± Someone asked me. A cousin of mine, someone I barely know. ¡°No, she just doesn¡¯t like it when groups of people hide in the hallway for no reason,¡± I replied. The house quieted down at my comment, and my cousin looked a bit nervous. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. ¡°So, Burton, where have you been lately? We haven¡¯t seen each other-¡± ¡°Shut up Andrew. I don¡¯t want to talk.¡± Not everyone knew Nick and Kayla¡¯s secret. Only my parents and my grandparents knew about their superhero identities, but our fallout was known to the rest of the family, even if the specifics were vague. ¡°Hey man, I¡¯m just trying to make conversation.¡± ¡°Oh yeah? With who?¡± I asked glaring down at his phone. He had a text chat open and was furiously typing stuff out. ¡°Oh, what? This? Nah man I¡¯m just talking to a friend of mine-¡± ¡°The contact lliterallysays Kayla,¡± I cut in. Andrew went still. If he were white, I¡¯m pretty sure I would have seen him go red as well. ¡°Nah, it ain¡¯t that Kayla man. It''s somebody else, a girl-¡± ¡°I don¡¯t care Andrew. Just leave me alone.¡± He seemed to finally get the hint, typed back a short message on his phone, and walked away. I leaned back and closed my eyes. First my mom, now a cousin who I shouldn¡¯t have held anything against. They were treating me like a child, approaching me with people they thought I would forgive or not be offended by. That sounded exactly like Kayla. I heard a short argument, then footsteps. Heels from the sound of it. ¡°Burton-¡± ¡°Go away, Kayla.¡± I didn¡¯t bother opening my eyes. I wouldn¡¯t cry if I saw her, I knew that. ¡°Burton, we need to talk.¡± ¡°No.¡± ¡°Burton we¡¯re sorry-¡± Mochi barked. ¡°Good dog,¡± I commented. ¡°At least hear us out, man.¡± This voice wasn¡¯t Kayla¡¯s. I opened my eyes and looked at the two people standing in front of me, Nick and Kayla. I knew they¡¯d do this. This is exactly why I didn¡¯t want to come. It had been less than ten minutes since I¡¯d been here, less than ten minutes, and yet here they were. Kayla looked sad and guilty, Nick looked defensive. They both looked good, looked happy and I didn¡¯t miss Kayla¡¯s left ring finger being covered up by her right hand. ¡°We heard about your leg, if you want we can pay for¡± ¡°I¡¯d rather cut off both my legs than let you guys fix one Nick. Now leave me alone.¡± ¡°Come on Burt, we said we¡¯re sorry. We¡¯re willing to do anything to fix this. What do we have to do to get over this? You don¡¯t have to love us, you don¡¯t even have to talk to us, but at least talk to your parents sometimes. What if your mother gets cancer next time? Or your father? Is that what it¡¯ll take for a visit.¡± ¡°I wouldn¡¯t bother for them.¡± There was a collective sigh in the room as aunts, uncles, cousins tagalong friends, and significant others gave a small look of shock. ¡°Burton,¡± Kayla looked to be on the verge of tears, real hurt tears. And I could see water in my mother¡¯s eyes as well. ¡°There¡¯s nothing you can do. I don¡¯t want to forgive. I¡¯ll never forgive, and I don¡¯t care about your marriage or your upcoming baby-¡± Another collective gasp went through the room. The proposal would have been known immediately but I guess they hadn¡¯t announced the baby yet. But Kayla wasn¡¯t the emotional type and she was wearing form-hiding clothes, stuff that made the belly look skinny. It was a shot in a dimly lit room but I had hit my target from their reaction. ¡°-Or anything else you might have going on. I want you out of my life, for now and forever. I don¡¯t want to fix this. I don¡¯t want to be the bigger man and I don¡¯t want to let it go. You are owed nothing.¡± Kayla started crying. Nick looked like he wanted to sock me in the face and Nana just sighed from her chair. ¡°Baby?¡± My mother asked. ¡°I- we meant to tell you if everything went well here,¡± Nick commented. ¡°How did you know?¡± ¡°Kayla texted me in private.¡± Watching Nick¡¯s face turn to Kayla¡¯s in worry and Kayla¡¯s face go from sadness to shock almost made me burst out laughing. ¡°Burton!¡± Nana yelled. ¡°It¡¯s obvious,¡± I muttered. ¡°Now go away.¡± ¡°Burton-¡± ¡°Leave him be,¡± Nana cut in. ¡°And it is obvious that you¡¯re pregnant, a few of us already had guesses.¡± A moment later the family scattered. I sat down, put on my glasses, and started scrolling through social media. I looked at the ceiling and my AR glasses projected footage onto its plane grey walls. The voice of an anchorwoman overlayed with aerial shots of the warehouse district. ¡°A week ago, there was trouble down in the warehouse district, just a mile in from the pier. Airborn and Tank were on site along with vigilante villain, Cobra. As of now the cause of the fight and its consequences aren¡¯t widely known, but the Hero Union has confirmed the arrest of multiple powered individuals, along with absolute secrecy of the affair.¡± Damn. Were they keeping everything silent? That meant that my footage wouldn¡¯t be sold off. It was possible to earn royalties from old footage. If HeroWatch bought the footage from the Hero¡¯s Union then I¡¯d get a small slice of that pie. ¡°Locals say that while this isn¡¯t the first time something like this has happened, the silence of the authorities has got them a bit worried.¡± It then flashed over to a warehouse worker being interviewed during midday under the dreary skies. ¡°Well, you know stuff like this happens here, but everybody knows that. You get some weird shipments, some big packages, whatever. But we don¡¯t know what happened that night ya know, so everybody¡¯s just clutching their coat a bit more, waiting to see what¡¯s happening.¡± Then the news logo flashed on the screen and the clip cut out. Nothing new. I rewatched the clip several times before looking back at everybody around me. The house was large, and while everyone did want to focus on Nana, most people were still just arriving, saying their greetings, and settling down with whatever food they¡¯d brought. So in this area, there was only me, Nana, and a few random cousins scrolling on their phones. Everyone else was too busy congratulating Nick and Kayla on their marriage and their baby. ¡°How old is that dog now?¡± Nana asked. ¡°About five,¡± I answered. Mochi barked. ¡°A little over five, actually,¡± I corrected. ¡°She looks well-trained,¡± Nana commented. ¡°She¡¯s a registered service dog, Nana, of course, she¡¯s well trained.¡± Mochi barked proudly. The collar didn¡¯t prevent her from speaking, it just choked her a bit if she started to form words. I didn¡¯t like it much, but Mochi was still a child. She yelled and spoke when she got emotional. And the collar had been designed by her from the bottom up. It would give her an uncomfortable sensation the moment before a word could leave her lips. Nothing violent. But her helmet had a neural reader in there and if there was anything she wanted to say, she could send that to me through my headphones or AR glasses. Like she was doing now. When do we eat? ¡°Nana, when do we eat?¡± A couple hours in, I¡¯d had a handful of conversations with Grandma and had gotten weird glares when I¡¯d made a plate for Mochi. Mochi was full, I was as well, and the night was just starting to clear out. I had seen my dad from a distance, but he hadn¡¯t said anything. Only a few cousins whom I hadn¡¯t seen since childhood even bothered to say high. Since this would be Grandma¡¯s final Thanksgiving everyone was here, and everyone wanted to talk to her. Friends, family, family of friends. Nick and Kayla had enough sense to avoid me, and I kept quiet the rest of the evening. All in all, the worst part was done, though I had noticed an annoying amount of glares from Kayla. But I just ignored her. That was the best medicine for healing. Time away from them and time spent doing something else. ¡°Burt, we need to talk.¡± I looked up and saw Kayla again. ¡°No,¡± I replied. ¡°But I- we had something we wanted to say-¡± ¡°And I wanted loyal friends. We don¡¯t all get what we want.¡± ¡°I know we hurt you and I understand that there¡¯s nothing we can say to undo it-¡± ¡°THEN WHY ARE YOU STILL TALKING?¡± I couldn¡¯t help it. My mind kept thinking, kept putting two and two together. I tried not to think about them, to think about the Wolf or the thing with Cobra, but the longer I was here the more sense it all made. ¡°I get it. You went to Nana and planned out this whole thing, probably saying something like ¡®We just want to be a family one last time before you go.¡¯ And fine, Nana relented and that¡¯s okay but why won¡¯t you accept failure? I¡¯m not dumb anymore Kayla. I saw you guys watch my car and I saw Andrew and I even saw the way Nick didn¡¯t want to talk to me. You want something Kayla, and I think I know what.¡± Her face froze up. It had been five years, and as much as I had avoided most of my family, Kayla and Nick had made it extremely easy. A baby and a marriage were one thing, but doing all of this, coordinating to talk to me. I hated to admit it, but I kept up with all the powered businesses within the city, and they were a part of it. Heroes had certain things that they were allowed and certain funds for growth. They could get grants from the Union for weapons or armored suits, or in their case, even secret hideouts. Secret hideouts were a part of hero culture and were pivotal to increasing output. A personalized private space within the city meant a place for you to grow in both power and ability. You could train there, build there. You could get a Union-sanctioned healing pod and recuperate after a long battle. And best of all, that hideout would attract other heroes into joining you. A person with a secret hideout got certain rights as well. Government papers came in along with a false business front. You could earn money by being a transport hub for the Union or use the base to attract and build your very own team of heroes. ¡°I¡¯m not selling the warehouse,¡± Kayla¡¯s mouth opened. Nana spat out some juice. ¡°What? Kayla? Is that what all of this was about?¡± Nana asked. ¡°Go away, Kayla. Go away and never talk to me ever again.¡± I kissed my angry grandmother on the cheek and went out to my car with Mochi. Chapter 6 Damn, I hated that house. Nana normally met me at some restaurant or park because that place always had some family in it. I¡¯d love to say it came from love, but it was probably some sad relative trying to worm their way into the will through the inheritance. ¡°Was it my fault?¡± Mochi asked through the mike ¡°Don¡¯t be ridiculous Mochi. If it wasn¡¯t for you I might have never gone.¡± ¡°Exactly. Was it my fault that I made you go? Should we not have gone at all?¡± My visor scanned through the streets. I was new to this part of town. I rarely patrolled this area, but that was the masked way. Heros were assigned areas by the Union, but vigilantes got to choose their location. A part of choosing that location was making sure you didn¡¯t stick around one area too long, otherwise someone might try to keep an eye out for you. Most people tended to patrol their own neighborhoods and that was an easy way to get your identity leaked. Normally that wouldn¡¯t matter, social media and news stations would shut it down, but if the wrong villain got word of a hero¡¯s identity, well their whole family might be dead within the day. That was the type of thing that got villains a kill order. Another danger of being a vig. ¡°Nah, I needed to go. Felt kinda good actually, cathartic. I never got to be so¡­intelligent around them, you know. I felt better than them in a way.¡± ¡°That sounds healthy,¡± Mochi mocked. ¡°You tried to eat cat shit the other day. You know nothing of health.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t know it was cat poop! It smelled like bacon, okay!¡± ¡°Tell it to the vet.¡± Mochi whined. This was what it was like most nights. Crime, as common as it was, wasn¡¯t common enough. Heroes got regular pay through the Union, vigs only got paid for every crime they stopped or criminal they captured or info they sold. Basically we had to provide something, heroes didn¡¯t. I sighed. But where there were people, there were crimes. It was a thing I looked into. I called it, the Powered Ecosystem. The basic idea was that crime lived in the cracks of legality, from surface-level stuff like illegal drugs to the pits of moral depravity like human trafficking. Deeper than you had mass murder and continent-wide threats, but those weren¡¯t crimes. Those were acts of war. But crime, in my eye, was a response. It was oppertunity. There were things people wanted but weren¡¯t allowed to have and someone was willing to break the law to give it to them. The question was, how could the Hero¡¯s Union exist? No seriously, how could it? How could there be enough money for a bunch of leotard-wearing bastards to karate chop each other into buildings? My visors picked up a heat signature. There was no one there but that just meant it was an invisible man. He was carrying something. I could tell by his steps and cadence. He walked like he had a big bag underneath his arm and the bag itself kept a good bit of the heat from his body. Not too much but I could just about make the outline. My silent fans turned on and I slowly trailed after him. The answer was simple. It couldn¡¯t. The Heros¡¯ Union couldn¡¯t exist, not if only fighters were accounted for. But ¡®Hero¡¯ was a wide term. There were wishers in the medical field, wishers with dangerous and extremely sought-after powers who wished to work nonviolently. And the Union handled them as well. Super doctors, super builders, super intelligent engineers, they all worked underneath the Union. And they all paid into the Union. That was how the Union was able to provide for its people. And villains were the same. A villain didn¡¯t just have to threaten to take over a city or end the world. Only the crazy ones did that. Most villains would smuggle tech, drugs, and any number of illegal material. A lot of them built weapons, a lot of them made drugs, and a few even made diseases. The common cold had been wiped out once, then a villain had made a new one. We made cures for drug addiction, then a villain made EJ. That was a drug known as Eternal Joy. Villains were secretive and methodical, killing more of each other than they did civilians. Killing civilians was a good way to get yourself a kill order, so most of them avoided that. Their money came from all levels of society, but particularly the upper classes. There were aquirers, collecters, ensurers, assassins, dealers, corperate espionage specialists, and just plane old muggers. Villains were like parasites. They ate as long as society ate. Most of them were bad but not bad enough to make the people act. They preyed on society. While the good wishers were able to reinforce society and benefit it in numerous ways, the bad ones would take advantage of that growth to benefit themselves. And so went the cycle of humanity. ¡°Mochi, do we have any way of knowing what he''s carrying?¡± ¡°Not unless you can transmit smell.¡± ¡°Alright, we''ll play dirty.¡± I opened my wings and flew directly at the man. Now if was innocent, I might have a strike against my name. It might even impact the Crow¡¯s record, that would be the case if he were visible. I sent the man sprawling and watched as the bag appeared out of nowhere. I grabbed it and immediately started shuffling through it. A moan came from the ground. ¡°What the hell?¡± He grumbled. I kept ruffling through the bag. ¡°Sorry, didn''t see you there. Are you alright? You need some help?¡± ¡°Ooo what the fuck?¡± The man, no boy, mumbled. He couldn¡¯t be a day above fifteen. He was young, wore glasses, and had on the type of shoes that people would mock him for. And his bag was full of high tech. Nothing illegal in parts, but highly illegal in this specific situation. A lot of these parts were black market valuables and required permits for movement and sales. That along with these specific parts, ray tips, light focusing lenses, LICOM batteries, all components for ray guns. ¡°What are you doing running around with all of this?¡± The kid quickly got himself up and went invisible again. One of my wings smacked him back down. ¡°Whoops, sorry there kid. You really shouldn¡¯t be running around all invisible like that.¡± ¡°FUCK!¡± He yelled. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. Then he reached for his waist. I readied my weapons and aimed for his hand. He pulled out a piece of paper. ¡°Look man, I have a permit for this. I¡¯m just taking it down to the dock for a friend.¡± I looked at him and tossed his bag behind me, my wings separating him from it. My talons weren¡¯t really made for griping. ¡°Show me,¡± I said. And he did, holding up the paper and flipping through the pages one by one. ¡°Those are fake,¡± I replied. ¡°What? No. But Christian said- he said this was all legal and they just -¡± ¡°Do you know what you''re moving?¡± I asked him. ¡°LICOM batteries. Christian said they were for their cars. He- I know you can¡¯t just move them but he said he¡¯d give me five hundred because I can go invisible and stuff.¡± This was common. Not all wishers gained amazing incredible powers. Infact, there were common powers that one out of every one hundred people would get. Some would be smarter, others would be hard working with immensee stamina, some would get invisibility, and a few could even read minds. Powers like that were common, so people didn¡¯t go and hide their abilities. That was a recent development, but an accepted one. As long as you were registered and didn¡¯t use your powers to break the law, you could use them to do all types of things, including work. That¡¯s what this guy thought he was doing I guess, working. I kept an eye on his breathing and heart rate. ¡°These are ray gun parts kid,¡± I replied. ¡°You could become a registered villain with this stuff.¡¯ ¡°What? No, no- I- I didn¡¯t know. I swear, I- he told me this was for a car I swear-¡± Then the kids started crying. His pubescent voice cracked as he paced side to side with his hand on his head. His heart raced and his breathing quickened. ¡°I swear man- I swear I didn¡¯t know man. Please- fuck- CHRISTIAN- FUCK. I swear I didn¡¯t man. I don''t even have a ray gun bro I swear.¡± Ray gun components weren¡¯t easy to see when they were all disassembled like this. ¡°Burt-¡± ¡°I know Mochi,¡± I cut in. ¡°Who¡¯s Christian?¡± ¡°What?¡± ¡°I said who¡¯s Christian?¡± ¡°He¡¯s my friend man. I SWEAR DUDE-¡± ¡°Alright quiet down man. People are trying to sleep. Listen, I won¡¯t report you-¡± ¡°You won¡¯t? THANK YOU, MAN, I DIDN¡¯T KNOW I SWEAR-¡± ¡°If you introduce me to this Christian guy. What is he a friend of yours? A guy at your school?¡± ¡°No man, he¡¯s just this dude who hangs around Alvin Park.¡± ¡°Last name? Phone number? Where he lives?¡± The kid shrugged. I sighed. ¡°B- But I have his blackline if-¡± ¡°Useless,¡± I cut in. ¡°What?¡± ¡°This Christian guy, what did he look like? Did he always have the same outfit on? The same hairstyle, same accessories?¡± ¡°Maybe? Yeah, I guess he always wore the same coat and pants, and shit. But what-¡± ¡°How generic was he? How common did he look? Any strange features, anything stand out? Any tats?¡± ¡°Not really¡­ he looked pretty normal I guess but why does that matter?¡± ¡°He was a shapeshifter,¡± I replied. ¡°They generally look generic and common. They change into what they can envision so they have to keep a pretty still picture of their character, otherwise they might mess up some features. This Christian guy was probably a shapeshifter.¡± ¡°....What?¡± The kid looked like he was getting his mind blown. ¡°Nah, man. He- he loaned me twenty bucks-¡± ¡°To make you feel like he¡¯s your friend. He probably took you out to eat and talked to you a bunch, but never about himself.¡± ¡°Yeah but-¡± ¡°He¡¯s hung out with you a lot, offered you a good amount of cash and you felt too favorable towards him to refuse, right?¡± ¡°No, man. This- this- he wouldn''t-¡± I punched him in the face, lightly, but hard enough to give him a black eye. ¡°AH FUCK-¡± He grabbed his face, then I punched him in the nose. ¡°Take a selfie.¡± ¡°What the fuck¡¯s your problem-¡± ¡°Take a selfie,¡± I threatened. ¡°With your phone.¡± The kid obeyed, slightly quivering in fear. This must have been somewhat traumatizing to him. To have been caught with contraband, to be threatened with jail and minor villainy status, to be beaten on a cold and dark night. Good. ¡°Now send a pic to that Christian guy and tell him you just got robbed by someone in costume.¡± The kid went silent and did exactly as I said. Now he was afraid. He had assumed I was a hero, but now he was wondering. Eh, I¡¯d clear that up in a bit. He wouldn¡¯t be so obedient if he believed I was the good guy. What did he look like? Popped onto his screen. ¡°Tell him a black costume, masked, no logos. Tell him they asked for his name and blackline.¡± The kid obeyed and in less than thirty seconds, Christian¡¯s line went grey. ¡°Wh- what?¡± ¡°He disconnected, which means he buys the story,¡± I replied. ¡°Send him a few more texts asking him to explain and offer him his money back.¡± ¡°Why?¡± Mr Bloody Nose asked. ¡°Just do it,¡± I replied. The kid obeyed. The line remained grey but if this Christian guy reactivated this line he¡¯d see those messages. It would help sell the story. ¡°Text him again tomorrow and the day after, then hang around that park looking for him and if you find him, text me. Understand?¡± The kid nodded. I sent him one of my blackline codes and I appeared on his contacts and he in mine. It wasn¡¯t my main account and it would inform me when this Christian guy reappeared. ¡°What¡¯s your name?¡± ¡°Da-ve,¡± he muttered. ¡°Don¡¯t lie to me, kid. It¡¯s too late to get smart.¡± ¡°Daniel,¡± he replied a few seconds later. ¡°Listen, Daniel, sorry about the punches but consider it a lesson. That Christian guy used you and if he thinks you stole his stuff, who knows what would happen to you.¡± ¡°What do you mean?¡± ¡°Those are ray gun parts, kid, a fair chance he has a fully assembled one.¡± The kid¡¯s face went pale. ¡°Now, how many people know about your powers?¡± ¡°Just some friends,¡± he answered. ¡°Should be nobody but oh well. Chances are one of your friends slipped the secret and someone you know told this Christian guy. Then he changed up and met you under the name of Christian, that is if he¡¯s careful enough. Which he seems to be.¡± ¡°How do you know he¡¯s a he?¡± ¡°Shifters don¡¯t like to change genders much. Whatever they identify with is how their costumes present most of the time.¡± ¡°...Oh,¡± he replied. This was complicated. I hate complicated. ¡°Look kid, Daniel. Here¡¯s what you should do. You should go to the Hero¡¯s Union and let them know about your powers. You should even tell them what happened tonight if you need to. There¡¯s a lot of work for a wisher, even invisibility types. Private investigators, policemen, and security guards. You can even follow some strange animals and keep track of their behavior from a distance. Lots of jobs in the legitimate market for that power.¡± Daniel nodded. ¡°You should also tell your friends about what you''re doing, and maybe tell your parents. They¡¯ll be thrilled about their son becoming a wisher.¡± He nodded again. ¡°You only fill one niche in crime and it''s this one. And that path leads to minor villainy and prison.¡± The kid nodded again, more severely this time. I took his phone and looked at his GPS. I set it for home and saw his location. ¡°Stand up straight and spread your arms out.¡± ¡°What-¡± ¡°Just do it,¡± I said then flew into the sky with his bag in my hands. The kid watched me from the ground, still posing in a T position. Then I swooped down and latched my talons around his arms. He started to scream and move his arms. ¡°Stop squirming and screaming or I might drop you.¡± The kid grabbed tightly onto my talons and gritted his teeth. And then we flew. At first, he was scared, still grabbing tightly but it was a warm night. The air was fresh and the city sparkled beneath like an ocean of stars. The kid looked down, then he looked up. He stopped grabbing my talons and stuck out his hands to the sides. His palms spread out and trying to catch the wind. I circled around for a bit before dropping him off on his roof. ¡°Did you sneak out of the house?¡± I asked him. Daniel nodded still smiling with a black eye and bloody nose. He reminded me of me in an annoying way. ¡°If I catch you doing something like that I''ll even out those eyes, understand?¡± He nodded and straightened up. ¡°S- sorry.¡± I gave him a firm nod and flew up into the skies. ¡°Did you really have to hit him?¡± Mochi moped. ¡°Yes. Can¡¯t photoshop that type of stuff.¡± Mochi groaned but she knew I was right. Photoshop could be identified with the proper software. I was just crossing my t¡¯s and dotting my i¡¯s. ¡°You don''t have to be so stoic about it,¡± she called in. ¡°I¡¯m not gonna cry about it. Besides, I gave him a full life plan over there. And if he doesn¡¯t report to the HU I¡¯ll call Mike and report him myself.¡± ¡°Won¡¯t he get in trouble if that happens?¡± ¡°Maybe,¡± I grumbled. ¡°But better he get caught now than killed in some fight. And I¡¯d get to cash in this loot as well. Probably a good grand in here.¡± The Union would pay for parts like this, for both forensics and repurposed legal use. Chapter 7 I left the parts on top of an abandoned building and watched from a distance as a Union drone came by and picked it up. I could use the ray gun parts on my suite but that came with a few risks. On one hand, ray guns weren¡¯t really effective against wishers. Sure a blast or two could take them down, but solid rail gun bullets were way better for general offense. Everyone built their suites around ray guns. They were the most common weapon and every single wisher from Minor C¡¯s to Major S¡¯s had some sort of defense for them. Ray guns didn¡¯t actually shoot out rays, but rather shot out a condensed powder of material at the subject. The material was constantly exploding and depending on the radius of the shot, it could have many different outcomes. A concentrated shot could shoot through metal, brick, and many other materials. It would focus the exploding powder into a dense bullet-like density and propel it through the thickest of materials. In that sense, they were the equivalent of bullets, but the shots died at longer distances. The powder would break up into smaller pieces due to air resistance and at a range of about a hundred feet, most shots would be reduced to hot bursts of air. You could also set them too wide and have them hit a person with a dispersed force, making each shot the equivalent of a very strong punch. That, and you never ran out of ammo. You could get low on energy but the powder that ray guns used came from very dense and synthetic crystals that could last a near lifetime of usage. Law enforcement preferred them to regular guns as did most civilians. They were also endlessly augmentable. You could make up for the range, the deadliness, the force, and even the color of the shots. I preferred missiles, though I had a few ray gun components on my suite. ¡°Burton!¡± ¡°Yeah?¡± ¡°Money hit!¡± ¡°Nice.¡± Fifteen grand was a whole lot of money but not much in the world of high-tech exosuits. The only way I had managed to build this one was because of the contraband I had stolen back when I had first gotten Mochi. This suit in total was worth about three hundred thousand, and most of that value was in the battery. I pulled up my AR headset and started scanning the streets. One of the biggest impacts of privacy laws was the absolute lack of technological patrol. There were no drones or unnecessary cameras everywhere and even if you wanted security cameras outside of your house, you weren¡¯t allowed to point them upward or anywhere that wasn¡¯t your property. It hadn¡¯t been like that at first. Even after the Upheaval and the rough relationship between wishers and ordinary citizens, wishers hadn¡¯t requested such strict antimonitering laws. But over the years, again and again, people proved to track down a mask¡¯s secret identity and do any number of things to them. Secret government agencies, villains, and even regular people would track down wishers for one reason or another. Extortion, experimentation, hostages, trafficking, wishers had been victims of it all. And eventually, the Heroes Union grew a spine and a fist and started threatening absolute abandonment of nations, along with threats of invasion if those nations wouldn¡¯t respect the privacy of wishers. ¡°Anything on the drones?¡± I asked. ¡°Nope!¡± Mochi chirped. And so the time went. Like I said, crime didn¡¯t have a schedule. ¡°Maybe I should swing by other regions and-¡± ¡°Wait! I got something on the police scanners, hypersonic speed at the downtown region, looks like a showdown between two Major D¡¯s!¡± ¡°Send me the coordinates and I¡¯ll head over with the drones,¡± I replied. Just seconds after I said that the boom hit me. Hypersonic was Mach five and higher, and when masks moved at that speed the impact could be heard even from several miles away. I had caught it moments after Mochi had. I flew, pushing my suit to its top speed. Oak City was one of the largest cities in America. It was also one of the newer ones. It had been built post-Upheavel and stretched wide across the land, hosting a bolstering ninety million people in its entirety and having a spread out landmass with sprawling suburbs, parks, and lakes, it wasn¡¯t the easiest place to navigate. Stolen story; please report. But I wasn¡¯t too far off from the downtown area and was able to make it just in time to see the fight. There were three speedsters below me and most of the booms weren¡¯t coming from them. Speedsters were great all-rounders depending on how their powers worked. They could think fast, act fast, and hit fast. But that wasn¡¯t their greatest use case. Their greatest use case was evacuation. The three speedsters limited their speed but ran around picking up humans, animals, and possible objects in that order. One of them paused and looked at me for an instant, then he nodded and got back to work. Caleb wasn¡¯t here, thank God. Speedsters and teleporters or portals were most commonly used in evacuation. The main fight was between two growers. They were both tall, both reaching the height of a bus. Now that alone didn¡¯t make them dangerous but their supernatural compact muscles along with their sheer durability and size made them both a menace to deal with. The shorter one had obsidian black skin and bladed elbows. He squatted, touched the ground, and ran. Boom. The air shouted as he ran towards his opponent at hyper-sonic speed, his bladed elbows pointing towards his stomach. His opponent, a blue-scaled ball of muscle brought his forearms together directly where the strike would have hit. Bone cut flesh and flesh gave way. The blue man screamed, pushing his forearms forward into the black-bladed fellow. The fast one with the sharp joints was a hero, the blue was the villain. I recognized them, Razor and Roid, arch enemies. Razor tore away his bladed joints and took several steps back, his black sharp elbows painted blue with his opponent''s blood. The blue monster roared and lunged. Again the air screamed but he was sonic at best. Razor was the one who specialized in running. Razor ran circles around him, leaping from one side to another. Then he came from the back, elbows out in attack. Roid turned backward, a rabid grin on his face and he punched Razor like a Mac truck. The speedster went flying backward and into a stray building. ¡°Uh oh,¡± I muttered. Roid ran towards Razor, trying to take advantage of the downed grower, but before he could do that, one of the speedsters hit him with a pole. That was the thing with growers since their abilities were tied to their emotions, they needed to be wild and emotional to be powerful. So simple provocations, even obvious distractions meant to give the opponent more time, worked like a charm. As Roid turned and reached for the speedster who was already long out of his reach, Razor had already gotten back on his feet. Abilities were ranked on a multitude of criteria, nature being one of them. But the most defining aspect of an ability was the level to which you could use it. Roid was a Major D. As far as growers go, he would be considered a Major F if not for his exceptional strength and durability. He was hard to injure and keep down, and while most growers simply ignored the pain, Roid averted it. Even now his scaled blue forearms were closing up the seconds old would and his strength, if used right could bring down a building easily. Some growers grew only a few inches tall and gained somewhat superhuman strength. Those were in the Minor leagues. Razor lacked durability but his healing was on par with Roid¡¯s and his stamina surpassed his. That, along with his enhanced speed and stable intelligence, gave him the ability to register as a hero and use his powers legally. But a speedster of Razor¡¯s level would be much faster, twice at least. And a strongman at Major D would be stronger than Roid and have similar levels of durability. But they wouldn¡¯t have the other various abilities that the two growers had. They wouldn¡¯t have Razor¡¯s healing or bladed limbs and they wouldn¡¯t have Roid¡¯s healing and pain tolerance. Most growers lost their minds the stronger they got. But Razor seemed to stay sane, if a little violent. But Roid, he was a different story. He took full advantage of his powers, even consuming a mixture of drugs specially synthesized to increase his rage before he transformed. He had a kill order. ¡°Roid face sheet,¡± I said to my AI. Roid: Grower, Rager If seen in human form kill as quickly as possible. Kill order issued: 01/03/2173 Crime: Killed fifteen bystanders as a distraction for his escape. ¡°Holy cow,¡± I muttered. You had to do some fucked shit to get a kill order. The Union wanted to capture villains more than kill them most of the time. It wasn¡¯t for rehabilitation¡¯s sake either, the villains would be locked up on the Second Moon till the end of their natural lives if they were bad enough. No one knew why they didn¡¯t just kill them or as to what they were doing up there, and the truth was no one really cared. Roid looked around in anger, trying to find his target. He was angry and he was dumb but he was still thinking. He looked around, searching for something, then he saw it. A car, he ran towards it picked it up, spun, and threw it directly at a building. A still occupied building. How much could you evacuate in about two minutes? That¡¯s how long this fight had been going on after all. Masked fights weren¡¯t quick and about a quarter mile away was a still occupied building, one that they had yet to clear out. It was four stories tall and the car was aiming directly towards the highest one. The speedsters ran towards it. They broke the speed of sound practically tripping over each other to stop the car from hitting the building. But while they could move that fast, the people they were trying to evacuate couldn¡¯t. Their necks would snap and their organs would smush against their inside at that acceleration. Razor ran, using his immense speed to run up against the wall of the building and leaping off of it. His body propelled forward, meeting the car in mid air and stopping the collision with his own body and strength. But that wouldn¡¯t do anything, not when Roid had thrown another car directly after the first one. Not when Razor was in the air and unable to do anything about it. Chapter 8 ¡°FUCK!¡± Was all that came out of my mouth as I flew towards that floating car at top speed. Razor couldn¡¯t move it. The speedsters could maybe do a quick evacuation, but that was a whole building, not a room of five or six people. If that sedan hit any part of that building, chances were that someone would die. I hit the car from another angel. I wasn¡¯t pushing back against it, no that would have gotten me killed, exosuit or not. I was just pushing it enough to change its trajectory. The car was flying from Roid to the building, but with my talons pushing against it and my wings blasting at full power, I was able to able to push the car to the side. It barely missed the building. The windows on the building suddenly exploded and I looked, horrified for a moment that Roid had done something else. It was the speedsters. They had broken the windows and chose to run up the wall and through the windows to start the evacuation process. People found themselves zipped away by streams of multicolored light. Roid threw another car but this time Razor was ready. Instead of jumping to intercept it as he had done before, he found a car and threw it toward the one Roid had thrown. The two collided in mid-air and the manager of metal screeched and slid onto an unoccupied street. Roid roared. The problem was Roid¡¯s defense. Unless we could hit a vital organ or outright kill him in one go, he would just keep healing and running. I screeched. The Crow, that was the name I¡¯d given myself. Partly because I liked the animal, but also because of this neat little piece of tech I had. All the surrounding glass burst and both Roid and Razor clenched their ears at the screeching call. My should pads extended as small missiles fired from off from them and ran directly into Roid¡¯s face. One, two, and three, small explosions were blocked by his hands. I screeched again and circled his angry form. I couldn¡¯t do damage, not to him, not from this high up, and not with this tech. But I could be annoying, a distraction. Roid raged, grabbing another car from the street and throwing it at me with super strength. I swerved out of the way and the car slammed into the building from before. Razor had already taken advantage of this, circling the blue menace from the back. Roid turned, changing his attention to the immediate threat. I fired missiles and before he could see where Razor was, one of them slammed into his cheek. It wasn¡¯t enough, just a rough punch to a big brute like him. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. But I was the distraction. In that next instant, right before Roid could even raise his head to see me, Razor¡¯s bladed elbow cut open his neck. Roid grabbed at his neck, rage mixing with surprise. He was trying to squeeze the wound and hold it without choking himself in the process, but that was impossible. Then Razor came in again, cutting his spine open from the back. Then again, then again, then again. Archnemesis, a lot of heroes and villains had them. Their fights were personal and got a lot of media traction. Roid and Razor¡¯s story was a known one. There was no special history or connecting through lines, just hate. Roid was small in real life, about five feet four inches. And if anyone messed around with him, he would use his powers and anger to take care of them. One day, he ran into Razor in his human form and the fight grew from that. There was suspected to be a more personal reason for the rivalry between the two but whatever it was had never made it out to the media. It probably risked their private identities and the law was very strict on that kind of thing. Roid fell forward, his body cut apart like a messed-up piece of origami. But he was still alive and Razor clearly didn¡¯t like that. He walked up to him and looked at me, or rather he looked at the recording that I currently had running, then he raised his bladed knuckles and slammed them through the unconscious Roid¡¯s skull. The speedsters arrived quickly after that, all of them looked tired and some of them even looked sympathetically at Razor. The bladed obsidian giant stood with labored breath and stared at the corpse in front of him. It felt like I was seeing the clipped ending of a movie I had never watched. This moment of death and misery felt private somehow. Razor just stood there and waited, watching for any signs of life, for a single stray breath. There was pure hatred in his eyes. He looked back at the camera again, at me. It was a solid look, an accomplished look. He had no regrets. ¡°Don¡¯t watch Mochi,¡± I whispered. ¡°My eyes have been closed for a while now!¡± She said worriedly. I flew off. Razor would get in trouble for that. A kill order was a kill order, but Roid was clearly incapacitated and able to be arrested. That final punch through the skull, that had been personal. Incoming Call: Mike. ¡°Answer.¡± ¡°He killed him didn¡¯t he?¡± ¡°Squashed him like a bug,¡± I replied. ¡°Unnecessarily?¡± ¡°I would say so. The guy was out and shrinking and it would have taken him like an hour to heal from all that in his grower form, much less his shrunken one.¡± Mike let out a deep and tired sigh. ¡°Alright, send me the footage and your cash will be on its way soon.¡± ¡°Sure,¡± I hesitated. ¡°Did he have a good reason to kill him?¡± Mike considered telling me off, but he knew I had the footage and if he was trusting me to not sell that off, he could trust me with something that would leak pretty easily. I was about to say all of that when Mike spoke. ¡°Yes. He had every reason to kill him, good and bad. He¡¯ll probably get away with it even though it¡¯s against our rules but I doubt anyone can really punish him for this. We don¡¯t put the worst things on the kill order you know, only the stuff we need to justify it. Roid had it coming, I¡¯ll leave it at that.¡± Then the line went dead. Chapter 9 In a small suburban house sat a lanky, skinny man. His skin was white, and his eyes were baggy. He was shirtless, having no clothing aside from the elastic pants he wore. Around him were pieces of meat, red and white bits scattered everywhere. The occasional bone could be found scattered throughout the room. He was covered in blood, soaked in it. It dripped from his matted black hair and onto the already-soaked carpeted floor. It dripped. And dripped. And dripped. The man¡¯s eyes snapped open, and almost immediately, he puked. Vomit escaped him over and over again, and his body pushed out a large amount of material. It blended in very well with the mess around him. It had the same color and texture as the gore surrounding him. Eventually, he ran out of material, but he kept dry heaving. He would stop at times, look around, look anywhere, only to have his stomach continue the evacuation process. Blood was everywhere, flesh was everywhere, and death was everywhere. And the poor man knew he had done this. A voice laughed in the back of his mind. He didn¡¯t bother to even acknowledge it. But it knew that the man heard him, and it mocked his disgust. It kept laughing and laughing, but the noise didn¡¯t bother the man. It was expected. It was like watching the fallout of a hurricane or staring at the broken crumbled-up homes left by an earthquake. It was natural. He hated himself for the apathy. He hated himself for a lot of reasons, too long to list. But even self-loathing had settled into a rhythmic wave of emotions. It had a pattern, a movement of highs and lows and this was just one of those highs. He cried the voice laughed, he dry-heaved, the voice laughed. He hated himself, and the voice hated him as well. After about thirty minutes of this, like a child who had ignored their alarm the first ten times it had gone off, the man stood. He looked only towards the bathroom and walked with stumbling feet, ignoring the squish of the cold and sticky carpet. He stepped. Once, twice, thrice, four times. He was almost there. ¡°Stop,¡± A voice spoke. He thought it was the one in his head for a moment but it was a new voice entirely. He stumbled. He wanted to be clean. He wanted to wash himself, then run away. He wanted to escape before they got here. Escape before he gets them. ¡°Please,¡± he whispered. Then he yelled. ¡°Please get away from here. I- you can¡¯t stop me. This- I am at least a major B-rank threat. Please contact the Union, if you stay here any longer he- I might loose control. Please call them. Please.¡± He heard footsteps. ¡°Please, no,¡± he begged the voice. ¡°Let''s just run. It¡¯s practical, you know it is. We can just leave, we don¡¯t have to kill-¡± ¡°My, my,¡± the voice suddenly spoke. It was p pusing his mouth, using his face, his body, his form, but it was not him. ¡°You don¡¯t take too kindly to a warning now do you? The man practically begged you and you couldn¡¯t be bothered to wait.¡± ¡°You were on my schedule.¡± The other person replied. Their voice sounded clean. It sounded coherent and put together. Every word was pronounced and executed so clearly that it seemed to have an accent of its own. ¡°I assume this is Mr. Hyde?¡± The clean voice added. Hyde, that was what the voice in the back of its mind called himself. That was who controlled his body now. ¡°You¡¯ve heard of me?¡± The voice in his throat mused, turning to confront the owner of the clean voice. The man was draped in white. The clothing was something strange, something between the robes of the pope and the gown of a surgeon. He had a long white coat that covered everything from his neck to his feet and it walked with nothing. He had walked through the room, through the carpet soaked in human blood and yet not a single drop of it was on him. Behind him were footsteps of white fur. No, not fur but carpet. The spots where he stepped were clear of blood and flesh. They even lacked the original brownish stain of time that had settled there. ¡°I¡¯ve been looking for you,¡± the surgeon answered. ¡°Really now? That¡¯s rare, quite rare. I¡¯ve never been the hunted-¡± ¡°Doctor Michael Andres, born 2107, day month or time unknown. Born a few decades after the Upheavel, our monitoring abilities hadn¡¯t quite caught up yet. And even when they would get there they¡¯d be limited by those pesky privacy laws. 2121 was the year of your fist and major transformation. ¡°Fourteen years old, having read the book Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you must have made a wish. A stupid teenager¡¯s mind is the type to glamorize the character within that book. I found it to be rather stale in truth, though the idea of a potion that could separate the human soul into angel and devil is a curious thought. ¡°Then I suppose the cycle of murder began. You¡¯re a grower with a hyper-intelligent alter ego, meaning your grower form knew enough to move location after every crime and how to operate among the civilian population with your normal form. ¡°A unique but not unheard of situation. Fortunately for everyone else and unfortunately for you, your grower form took to tormenting you and breaking down your sanity with acts of gratuitous violence. Murder, rape, cannibalism, et cetera, while you sat in the back and watched. Is that correct?¡± ¡°Why yes, it is,¡± Mr Hyde replied with a large and toothy smile. ¡°I wasn¡¯t speaking to you,¡± The surgeon snapped. ¡°Mr. Andres, would you prefer death to this miserable existence? Do you wish for it all to end?¡± Trapped in the back of his mind, caged in the center of his own being. Michael Andres yelled out with affirmation. It was silent and noiseless, but Mr. Hyde could hear it. Mr. Hyde frowned, and as if that was all the affirmation the surgeon needed, he nodded. Then, Mr. Hyde shifted. He grew, flesh made more flesh, and the sensation of his muscles, limbs, jaws, eyes, and bones growing overwhelmed him. It felt like a tumor was overtaking him. His skin stretched thin, threatening to burst open with the growing flesh, then even the skin began to grow. Veins squirmed on his forehead and sharp teeth cut his own tongue, but Hyde didn¡¯t mind. He swallowed the cut bits of his own flesh as new parts grew to replace them. The house was small, too small for Hyde¡¯s full form. In all of his decades of torment, even Michael hadn¡¯t seen the full abilities of Hyde. He hoped that would not happen today. Hyde¡¯s head met the roof. A mixture of wood and drywall tried its best to keep him down. It cut his skin as it splintered, bits of wood burying themselves into his newly grown muscles, but the flesh did not stop. It pushed, pushed, pushed, pushed, and pushed again. It ate the splinters, it broke the wood and invaded the attic. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. It was agony, fresh nerve endings sending pain signals down to the mind. Mr. Hyde redirected them, sending them to Michael and punishing him for his silent outburst. Michael screamed and Hyde smiled. ¡°Interesting,¡± the surgeon noted. He was still there. Rubble littered the place and bits of the ceiling were dangling dangerously above his head, but he stood unperturbed. Hyde kept growing and with each growth, Michael felt a sense of renewing dread. Hyde had never grown this much before. He had never pushed for this much strength or power, and Michael didn¡¯t know he was even capable of doing this. As Hyde¡¯s head burst through the ceiling, Michael could only sit there trapped in the back of his mind, and watch as Hyde outgrew the house. It crumbled as Hyde¡¯s torso burst through the ceiling. The surgeon seemed to have gotten buried beneath the rubble. He might be dead, but he probably wasn¡¯t. Michael had called Hyde a Major-B rank threat, but that was based on his own assessments of Hyde¡¯s abilities. He had once seen Hyde swallow a handful of children out in some countryside. He had heard them scream, felt them clawing in his throat, swallowed alive and still crying in his stomach. That had been one of the worst days of his life. He had stopped eating then, refusing any morsel of food, but if he tried to harm himself, Hyde would take over and prevent him. The house was now the size of his feet. Hyde was going all the way and this wasn¡¯t a Major-B level threat, this was Major-A, maybe S. Michael wanted to cry. He wanted to close his eyes and not see or feel the destruction he knew would be coming. He wanted to beg Hyde to stop, beg him to only kill the surgeon and not the many houses beneath him. ¡°Don¡¯t worry Mr. Andres, this entire neighborhood has been evacuated. Its only me and you for miles around.¡± A small voice spoke. Hyde turned, looking for the source of the noise but couldn¡¯t find it. ¡°Now I must ask,¡± the voice continued. ¡°What¡¯s the exertion?¡± Hyde zeroed in on the source of the noise and saw the small man standing ontop of the first broken house. The giant wasted no time, raising his foot to step on the little white stain. That was strange. Hyde normally played with his victims. He liked watching them suffer, but this time he seemed eager to end it. He seemed scared. There was an explosion as the rubble flew out beneath Hyde¡¯s foot. Pieces of house and debris scattered through the streets and clashed with other homes, but for some reason, his attack did no more than that. It should have buried his feet into the ground. It should have caved into the sewers beneath and even further down into the ground. ¡°I would like to take a moment before all of this fighting to ask you some questions,¡± the voice came again. ¡°Wishers have different manifestations with different rules, yes. Some have fundamental changes to this physiology that allow them certain abilities, such as tinkers and biologically altered individuals. For them, exhaustion is physical; a sum of stamina and training informs the expenditure and degree of their abilities. It can even be mimicked via genetic altering, as you very well know. But active abilities that break and violate the conventional law of physics have their own form of exertion. For growers, it''s emotion, rage, hatred, fear, et cetera. What is yours?¡± Again, Hyde found the source of the noise, and again he attacked. This time the surgeon was to the left of him, about a hundred feet. Hyde hit harder this time, putting the whole of his weight onto the man. The giant jumped onto the white spot. But just as he was about to land, the ground disappeared, and all that was left was a hole. A giant cube of land had just evaporated from the pavement to the ground beneath it. Hyde grabbed at his sides, spreading his arms out wide and grabbing at the edges of the hole. His weight was heavy, and his palms struggled to keep him up. In front of him, standing at the edge of the hole, was the little white surgeon. ¡°Please, answer the question before causing any further property damage.¡± Hyde pushed off the edges of the hole and propelled himself forward, reaching for the white robed man. He grabbed nothing. And that was when Michael felt it. They had always been able to feel each other''s emotions and understand each other''s feelings. That was what made it all the worse; Hyde¡¯s evil was his evil. When Hyde killed with joy, he felt. Michael felt the joy and evil burning in Hyde¡¯s heart, and Hyde felt the pain in his. But now, for the first time in his miserable existence, Hyde felt something else. Fear. Hyde was afraid, and Michael reveled in it. Hope shined within him? Was this it? Was it finally over? Would this be the day Hyde met his end? There was joy, then there was fear. For all his desire of death, Michael realized something within the moment, he feared it. He wanted it more than he feared it but he feared it nonetheless. Hyde roared at his terror, climbing fully out of the pit and raising his giant hand high. ¡°I see,¡± the surgeon spoke. ¡°So that¡¯s it then. Your ex-¡± Hyde smacked down on the surgeon. Wrath and fear bleeding together into hatred. The surgeon now stood on his hand, still unbothered, still untouched. ¡°Your exertion is suffering; you feed off of the suffering Michael goes through. And since the man fears death, as any man should, the closer I get to killing you the stronger you become.¡± The words sent terror into Michael¡¯s soul and a new fear rose in his mind. Hyde squashing on cities. Hyde burning down millions. Hyde killing, torturing, eating the whole of humanity. Fear ran through him, and though he wished it didn¡¯t, he could not stop it. He had always known that Hyde took pleasure in his suffering, but he thought it was evil. He assumed it was sadism and provided nothing more than sick and twisted joy to the monster. But now, he knew and the future seemed all the darker for it. Hyde smiled, and the growing that had stopped, started up again. Michael tried to prevent it. He tried to control his panic but Hyde wouldn¡¯t let him. The fear in his mind was set free and Hyde devoured it whole. ¡°Well, as much as I¡¯d like to see the whole of you, everything has a limit,¡± the surgeon sighed. Hyde moved and the ground rippled as his punch sunk into the earth. Streets turned into rubbled. Houses collapsed by the dozens and the shock wave shook the neighborhood. And that was from one punch. And somehow, the surgeon stood atop Hyde¡¯s hand, normal and unbothered. The surgeon kneeled and touched Hyde¡¯s buried fist and spoke one single word. ¡°Separate.¡± And Michael felt his soul split in two. There was no pain, no screaming, or hellish noises. Just a quick and simple change. Where there was one, now there were two. Michael lay where Hyde stood. He looked around surprised to have gained back control of his body. He sat in his own foot print and found himself in the very center of the indentation Hyde had left. To the left of him, far to the left of him was a large squirming worm. It was about the size of a cat and it writhed and shook, squirming in pain and shock. It was Hyde. He didn¡¯t know how he knew but he knew. He got up, approaching it slowly. He reached around, grabbing for a stone that fit his hand. ¡°Stop,¡± a voice spoke. ¡°Don¡¯t kill it.¡± He remembered the voice. It was the surgeon, but he didn¡¯t care. He didn¡¯t listen. He needed to kill it. He needed to kill him. How could he allow such a being to continue to exist? How could he allow it to breathe? He had to end it. He raised the stone above his head, only to feel it crumble into a ball of dust before he could bring it down. ¡°You don¡¯t know what that thing is,¡± Michael screamed. ¡°You don¡¯t know what it¡¯s done. What it''s made me do, what it wants to do!¡± ¡°On the contrary, I know exactly what it is,¡± the surgeon replied. ¡°Do you? Do you truly?¡± Michael asked. ¡°Of course, it is the separated evil of the human soul. That¡¯s what Hyde was in the story, and that¡¯s what it is now.¡± Michael just stared at the stain on the floor. The pitch-black worm waited, squirming like a blind and dying beast, searching for the shade. Michael frowned, his lips clenching. He wanted to kill it, he wanted to end the thing. But even now, even in this very instant, Hyde felt something else in the depths of his soul, mercey. ¡°What¡¯s wrong with me?¡± He asked, echoes of a cry kept down in his voice. ¡°Nothing,¡± the surgeon spoke. ¡°As Hyde is the separated evil of the human soul, you are his antithesis. You are the good left behind. That¡¯s why you care for it even now, that¡¯s why you never turned cold to the torment. His Jekyll and the persisting good in the heart of every man.¡± ¡°Is that so?¡± Michael Andres replied, still staring at the the thing on the floor. ¡°It is,¡± the surgeon replied as he walked over to the squirming creature. He leaned over curiously and touched it. Michael watched as the worm seeped into the surgeon¡¯s hands and even the surgeon¡¯s plane face shone with surprise in the moment. ¡°Intrest- ting,¡± the surgeon managed before his face twisted into a disgusting smile, a familiar smile. ¡°No!¡± Michael screamed but it was too late. The surgeon was no more, and only the cruel cruel thing remained. Then Hyde stopped, and then Hyde screamed. ¡°A curious thing about emotional suffering,¡± the surgeon said. ¡°It is a byproduct of empathy. If you care about something, anything, then losing it or seeing it come to harm will cause you some great discomfort. Michael was an endless well of it, I¡¯d imagine. The perfect host for your composition.¡± Hyde looked to him and stumbled towards him. ¡°But I am quite clean of such troubles.¡± The surgeon muttered. Then the word was repeated once more. ¡°Separate.¡± The worm was thrown into the floor again, thinner this time as if infecting the surgeon had staved it more than helped it. ¡°Hm,¡± the surgeon said. ¡°It has a few hours left to live, maybe a day. But I should be able to synthesize food for it, though I¡¯d need some help. Hmm.¡± Michael just stared. He didn¡¯t know what to say to the man. He couldn¡¯t quite believe it himself. How had a person, any person, taken in that thing and managed to expel it? ¡°How?¡± Michael questioned. The surgeon was bending over with an open container, hadn¡¯t even heard him. ¡°How?¡± He repeated, a little louder this time. The surgeon packed in the worm, scooping it up with the aid of a glove and making sure to gather any contaminated earth in the area. But still he was unheard, and the surgeon was just muttering to himself in the corner. ¡°We''ll have to burn the whole place, maybe with the help of Paragon, just to be sure. He should be able to-¡± ¡°HOW?¡± He yelled this time. ¡°How did you do that? How did you push it out?¡± The white-robed man turned to him with a look of slight surprise, as if he had already forgotten about him. The surgeon stared at him. It wasn¡¯t a cruel stare nor a hateful one. It wasn¡¯t empathetic or kind. It wasn¡¯t comforting or annoyed, it was just a stare. A moment of observance that was utterly removed of emotion. ¡°I do apologize, Mr. Andres. A Union team will be here shortly to assist you and your new predicament. Don¡¯t worry yourself, in cases like these you will be seen as a victim and be granted freedom by a Union judge after a thorough investigation. And while we will advise you to secrecy, as exposing who you are and what Mr. Hyde has done can and will lead to problems within your own personal life, you are free to express your experiences in any way you choose to. As for your accommodations, the Heroes¡¯ Union will be paying for your necessities for the rest of your natural life. And I expect you to live for another seventy years or so, even though its been about a century since your wish, Hyde has been increasing your lifespan, keeping you near your twenties for that duration so you should be able to life a more than healthy life.¡± ¡°How-¡± ¡°Good day,¡± the surgeon spoke, and then he was gone. Chapter 10 I flew across the skies with only one thought in mind. Why? Now that I was past the family gathering, my head had cleared a little, and my work had grown a lot. I made my daily ends meet by being a mechanic and doing custom jobs here and there. I would charge for both parts and labor, and if I really wanted to, I could make great money with it. But that would mean practically announcing my wisher status to most people. I would have to get numerous degrees or certifications before I could do that type of work out in the open with no suspicion. So I focused on cars and made enough to live on. I had roughly five hundred thousand saved up from heroing duties, and while Mochi pestered me to get that nerve regeneration surgery. I had other plans for the cash. I wanted to save up for a new suit. But that was all easy, the mechanic work that is. I just had to wait on the parts. No, it was my second job that kept banging around in my head. The first question was the payout. It was simply too low. Fifteen grand was nice and much more than my usual gigs. I was lucky, but when compared to the cost of those crates, the henchmen, the equipment, and the warehouse, none of it made any sense. Each of those crates went for forty-five grand and higher on the legit market, and if I assumed what they carried was even more valuable, then I should have gotten an even larger sum, even if I had only acted as a liaison between Cobra and the HU. But that was a small discretion, one that would have been forgettable if not for all the other stuff. Why had they used Diapherius? They wanted to bait Cobra, that had been my first conclusion. But Cobra had already beaten Diapherius half to death, and the shifter was walking around on her turf. If anyone would know it was bait, it would be Cobra. As soon as she saw him, she would have informed the HU through local law enforcement or any other means. If Cobra hated them that much, then they should have known her reaction. I thought they were human trafficking since the Wolf had mentioned that, but the crates weren¡¯t big enough for that. Those crates were mostly tech in volume with a hole the size of a coffee table inside. Human traffickers were rare, but they had their own methods of functioning. Most of that tech came out of Valentine along with most of the trafficked people. Then there was the fact that they were staying silent, not letting any information go public about the incident. That had cut into my media pay. The last information was that this wasn¡¯t a single incident. There had been numerous calls throughout the city similar to this one. No media leaks, no noise, and heroes involved in dealings with lesser-known villains. I had a picture, a puzzle and I had built out the edge pieces fairly well. Now, all I needed was the center image. ¡°You shouldn¡¯t be looking into this,¡± Mochi commented. ¡°You always like the big stories, Burt, but this one smells like mailmen and Kimber¡¯s litter box after a fresh poop.¡± ¡°The big stories pay the best,¡± I replied. ¡°That¡¯s because you look for them! You like watching and waiting and figuring out things before doing anything! Remember that small time EJ ring we got? You worked on that one for two whole months before getting the Union involved!¡± ¡°And the pay was great,¡± I retorted. ¡°Yeah, but it took two months. You could¡¯ve gotten the initial dealers, then let the cops or Union handle the rest.¡± ¡°They would¡¯ve just popped up again.¡± ¡°Right, and that¡¯s why you¡¯re investigating something that the Wolf is already looking into and probably has more resources devoted to it than we could imagine. Just admit that you do it for fun, Burt!¡± Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. I smiled under the helmet as I heard Mochi munch down on some homemade beef jerky. ¡°Watch your salt intake, Mochi. The vet said you have high cholesterol.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t change the subject!¡± She barked with a mouthful of food. I chuckled as I flew low to the roof of a building. Mochi didn¡¯t leave the house much, and most of her excitement came from me fighting bad guys or her playing video games. At first, I had been worried about her need to socialize. She liked walks and parks and even the occasional game of fetch, but what friend group or people could she join publically? If she were revealed, there were high chances she¡¯d get stolen or taken by the Heroes¡¯ Union, and she refused to risk that. However, she had managed to find a way around the problem. One of her solutions was being perpetually online, and the other was living through my suit. ¡°It is fun,¡± I replied. Mochi grunted through bits of beef jerky. I scanned the rooftops, eyes looking for any sign of my objective. Suddenly, a white gloved hand waved me down. It belonged to a man wearing a white and black suit. It was low-tech, at least by my standards. He had ray gun resistant armor and a few weapons on hand, but it lacked major tech components. It could shift color and heat output along with reflecting numerous forms of light, but it was meant for stealth rather than fighting. But what he gave up in combat, he gained in maneuverability. I slowly descended onto the roof. ¡°You¡¯re not being chased, are you?¡± I asked as I landed. ¡°No, why did you see anyone?¡± He looked around curiously. He had on grey-green goggles, and they were probably the most high-tech thing on his person. ¡°No, but last time we met, you were being chased by a horde of corpo drones. And you have that duffle back next to you.¡± ¡°What this? These are just some of the things I brought. Just in case you were interested.¡± ¡°I said this wasn¡¯t about selling.¡± ¡°I know, I know, but I do have a few things in mind if you¡¯re curious.¡± I sighed. This was Tux, short for Tuxedo. He was a villain, technically. He was a tech thief, mainly targeting developed pieces of technology. He was a tinker by the rough definition of the word, but really he was just an enhanced. Enhanced was a classification of wishers who were just better. They were smarter, stronger, faster, more durable, and more capable in any way you could imagine. Tux here was a fifteen times enhanced individual, which meant he was fifteen times better at almost everything. He was fifteen times smarter, could run fifteen times faster, and was ten times as strong as a normal person. His reflexes, thought speed, memory, and calculation abilities were also on the same level. But enhancers had one major weakness, and that was that their abilities required an exertion. When I had made my wish, my brain had gotten rewired. It wasn¡¯t a temporary change but an innate one. If I got my brain scanned, my results would be different from others. I ate about thirty percent more than I originally did, and I assumed that was due to my altered brain. Tux, on the other hand, had a limited amount of juice. He got tired if he used his powers for too long. ¡°Like what?¡± I asked. ¡°Well, I got some new schematics off of some old decomed military suits along with some new roach killer tech and suit OS.¡± Damn, that sounded good. Roach killer tech was technology used in space to kill the space roaches someone had made two hundred years ago. They lived on cosmic radiation, could get as big as a mountain and had infested our solar system. They were a big issue for the Mars colony, and they had taken over Venus. ¡°Is it clean?¡± I asked. ¡°I do not sell infected software!¡± He replied, feigning insult. I gave him a look. ¡°You once sold me that helmet with-¡± ¡°I was drunk, I was drunk, and I gave you a refund! When will you let that go?¡± I pulled out a small handheld computer and held my hand out. ¡°How much?¡± I asked. ¡°Ten grand,¡± he replied. I nodded, and he handed me the drive. I plugged them into my computer and ran the programs. The suit OS was source code, and everything else was clean. Hacking nowadays was some tough stuff. Most information was communicated via trusted programs only, like Blackline and a few other file-sharing programs. Even the biggest of tech companies relied on one of the giants of the file sharing networks to encrypt and decrypt their information. Each of them had a quantum computer the size of a nuclear plant and were located right next to a giant nuclear plant running an immensely powerful AI algorithm. The whole of the internet was built around those companies, and every single one of them were routinely inspected by world governments and HU officials. But secure didn¡¯t mean safe. Sure, the files were private, but that didn¡¯t mean they couldn¡¯t hack you. I ran the files on my own. I nodded begrudgingly as my antivirus did its checks. Then I sent over the cash through our blacklines. ¡°Now,¡± I spoke as he shuffled through his bag. ¡°What do you know about those string of crimes from the past three weeks?¡± Chapter 11 ¡°Oh yeah, those were a bit strange,¡± Tux commented. ¡°Do you know anything about them specifically?¡± ¡°What¡¯s it worth to you?¡± Tux asked. Always the businessman, Tuxedo. He never missed an opportunity to make money. ¡°Call it a friendly chat,¡± I answered back. ¡°You called me over for a friendly chat?¡± ¡°I bought something, so I think I qualify for a friendly chat. Besides, I was at one of them, so you probably have nothing new to sell me.¡± Tux looked me up and down real quick. ¡°Fine, I know a guy over in one of the suburbs, small time vig, part time I think. He saw something and called in his contact as well. They were moving heavy too, thirty henchmen with three shifters. He said he scored twenty large off it.¡± ¡°Got footage?¡± I asked. ¡°Got money?¡± He replied. I stared silently till he relented. With a frown, he sent over a video file through blackline, and I let it play. My suit had various soundproofing abilities, mainly due to the nature of my sound-based attacks. But that was designed to keep noise out, not to keep it in. But Mochi was also watching the video at the same time as I was. So I didn''t risk talking to her, and honestly, I didn''t need to. She could practically read my intentions at this point and verified my ideas through the call. ¡°Yup, that¡¯s some expensive tech. The payout should have been way more than twenty thousand.¡± I nodded. ¡°Care to share with the class?¡± Tux asked. His suit changed colors, his lower body turning black and blending in with the shadows and his upper half being a contrasting white. ¡°No,¡± I sighed. ¡°It¡¯s private.¡± ¡°Awe come on-¡± ¡°It¡¯s a big deal, Tux. If I say anything, I might get in trouble.¡± ¡°That¡¯s just bad business right there, man!¡± I shrugged, turned around, and unfolded my wings. ¡°And after all that guy did to sell me this information, he wasn¡¯t supposed to talk about it, too.¡± My wings tucked back into my side. ¡°Elaborate.¡± ¡°Do we have a deal?¡± He said with a smile. ¡°Maybe.¡± That was the problem with Tux. He was greedy, like a mischievous cat who stole food from your plate. He normally knew when to stop, but this time, it was a bit different. He had no clue how big it was, and I certainly wasn¡¯t going to tell him. At least I wouldn¡¯t tell him about the Wolf. Someone was bound to have worked out the truth of the situation already, and it would be spreading soon so I could explain that much, but I wouldn''t say a word about the Wolf. The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. And I was hoping the random vig hadn¡¯t said anything, either. ¡°This guy,¡± the thief quipped. ¡°Fine, he said he got a long list of questions about the whole thing from the Union over blackline.¡± Only over backline? If he had met the Wolf, he probably wouldn''t have said even that much. He would''ve just scurried off and said nothing. ¡°And the footage, they allowed him to sell it?¡± ¡°There were a whole bunch of people there,¡± Tux shrugged. ¡°The local hero and the neighborhood watch had already seen it as well. Someone had already posted it, and nothing big ever came of it.¡± My mind started racing. ¡°What about all the other hits? Has the footage from those incidents been released?¡± ¡°Most yeah, but only privately. And a lot of people got a list of questions over blackline, specifically about the villains of the area and if they were involved in any human-trafficking affairs.¡± Uh-oh. ¡°You have their footage?¡± ¡°Yes, but I¡¯ll need something out of it or-¡± ¡°Yeah, sure. Send them over along with the payout amounts per person per incident.¡± Tux immediately sent over the information, along with a custom spreadsheet. I passed that over to Mochi while I thought. Tux waited eagerly to the left. ¡°Well?¡± I sighed. ¡°Hey!¡± Tux snapped. ¡°They were distractions, all of them.¡± ¡°What?¡± ¡°Every single call that night was a distraction. That¡¯s why the payouts were small. We make money from the legal reselling of illegally acquired assets, but they weren¡¯t moving illegal products. It was all an act to gather attention.¡± ¡°Maybe they were moving EJ?¡± Tux countered. ¡°If they were moving contraband that can¡¯t be resold, then it would make sense that the payout would be relatively small.¡± ¡°It would, but every call that night? All twelve of them? They were all moving contraband out in the open, practically begging to get caught?¡± Tux nodded at my response. ¡°But wouldn¡¯t that be expensive?¡± Tux muttered. ¡°It would cost millions.¡± ¡°Millions?¡± ¡°Millions,¡± I repeated. ¡°This isn¡¯t just moving product, this is a distraction, and it was one that the Heroes Union was already on the lookout for. If they¡¯re renting warehouses and hiring goons to fake criminal actions, they can¡¯t do it half assed. They would have to gain access to the location months ahead of time to make it look legitimate. I¡¯m just guessing here, but it looks like some of the houses and warehouses were rented out months in advance, and others gained access to them only a week before. That was the case with my building. Some of them screamed distractions, and others looked like a planned out operation, but they were all fake.¡± ¡°That still doesn¡¯t sound like millions,¡± Tux muttered. ¡°The henchmen, the wishers, the equipment, the transport, and then the fees and the actual cost of movement would be millions.¡± ¡°What fees?¡± ¡°Our payout probably came from some violation fee. Hiring criminals, illegal storing of goods, and unauthorized hiring of a wisher. Even if the payout is small, the Union takes their cut, the heroes get paid, and we get paid.¡± Tux nodded, but he still didn¡¯t really buy it, and I could see why. I left out the part about the Wolf. He was what sold it for me. If the Wolf was involved and looking into this, then it was of the highest priority. More than that, the Wolf had talked to me, in person. He had reached out to me, and that meant something. That meant that my call was different from the rest of them. He was looking into Cobra because something had been there. Not at that warehouse, but within the area. They had been there. They had been there, and they used me like a puppet. ¡°Wait, what¡¯s the cost of movement?¡± Tux added. ¡°What has the Union been asking about?¡± I asked. ¡°Human trafficking?¡± I nodded. ¡°But that doesn¡¯t make sense. Who would do all that just to move people? There¡¯s a lot of hookers in the red light districts. Going through all that trouble doesn¡¯t make sense.¡± ¡°They¡¯re not hookers, Tux.¡± ¡°Then what else-- oh.¡± I gave him a grim nod. ¡°Somebody¡¯s smuggling wishers.¡± Chapter 12 EJ was the most dangerous drug that had ever been synthesized. In its first iteration, it was just a combination of the most pleasurable drugs. Later on, someone synthesized an actual molecule that accomplished all those things and more. It was a large molecule, so large that only a chemist tinker could have devised the original design and chemical process. But that one molecule was designed to cause pleasure in every part of the body. It wasn''t addictive, at least not physically. But people who had tried the drug once could never live without it ever again. They found themselves constantly craving it, even without any physiological reactions. It was often described as the ultimate pleasure. It wasn''t the best feeling humans could naturally achieve, it was beyond that. There were many chemicals within the human body that could cause pleasure, but none of them could be compared to EJ. It contained compounds that would cause unnatural pleasure, unachievable without the substance. You would feel fulfilled emotionally. You would feel like you''d achieve Nirvana. You would feel like everyone in the world loved you. You would feel like your whole body was orgasming. The feeling was entirely inexpressible. Every other pleasure in life, no matter how great, felt like suffering compared to EJ. It lived up to its namesake, Eternal Joy, taken straight from the Biblical description of Heaven. Most people who had a taste of EJ were prone to suicide if they couldn''t get more. You''d hear news stories of the kindest individuals having had a taste and abandoning everyone they loved and everything they had just to get more of it. There were cults that were based around the drug. Some people believed that the drug was heaven and that everyone should be on it constantly. There was one singular treatment for the substance, but it was costly and dangerous. It was called Hell Juice, and it was the exact antithesis of EJ. The name was colloquial but fitting. Even in professional settings we called it Hell Juice. It was designed to prevent the subject from dying of shock while also firing every possible pain receptor within the human body and enhancing the experience as much as possible. That was why I shoved the syringe full of hell juice into the screaming man. The next several seconds were horrible. I had done this before, and I always did it with their consent, but how could you consent to this? How could you consent to torment, to horrible pain? You couldn''t scream when you were on hell juice. It hurt too much. Existing hurt too much. I could see his brain patterns on the monitor. It always spiked. It looked like the whole mind was just blossoming with activity. On one hand, a part of me couldn''t help but be amazed at modern medicine. The level of brain activity I was witnessing would make a seizure look like a calm nap. Everything was firing and not just in the mind but in the spinal cord, in the hands, and in the organs, everything was firing. He should have died due to shock. This should have effectively fried his nervous system, but it didn''t. It should have caused some level of memory loss, but it wouldn''t. Hell Juice, just like EJ, was designed to be a treatment. It prevented almost all of the negative physiological side effects that this much pain would normally cause. But I knew the man would remember, and when he woke up, he would be an entirely different person than when he went to sleep. It was effectively the worst kind of torture anyone could go through. A lot of hospitals didn''t offer this treatment just because of the ethical dilemma this would bring. But this man had gone through every stage of treatment to get here, and who was I to tell him no? I looked over to the monitor watching his heartbeat faster and faster and faster and then watch it slow down as the compounds relaxed his pulse. The effect would only last about ninety seconds. One minute and thirty seconds of pain, and he would be better. It sounded almost minuscule. But the idea was to create so much pain and suffering that the regular act of living would be bearable again. It was a hard reset to the hedonic treadmill. Eventually, the man moved. It was just a flinch, then the tears came. Then the screaming. Multiple orderlies held the man down. He wasn''t in pain anymore, at least not physically. The compound was designed to clear out almost immediately. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. It was specially prepared right before consumption and would only last for about a hundred seconds. But the man screamed. There was something about hearing a grown man scream. There were no words, no pleading, just a primal, animalistic scream. It didn''t even sound human. I knew from experience that his vocal cords would be messed up for about three weeks after this. I knew that he would scream until he couldn''t and that he''d be fighting off the orderlies for at least half an hour. I knew he might go catatonic for a while, from a day to a week. I knew he would have to be monitored for suicidal activities for the duration of his stay and set up for psych evals after. And yet I knew he was better. That was a sacrifice for this job. EJ didn''t create a physiological scar. While that might seem like a good thing, it was actually the opposite. We could cure addictions with physiological causes. Reliance on a single substance and a physical chemical dependency could be treated. Hell, I could treat that by myself with no equipment. I could rearrange his body and fix him in a matter of minutes. But I''d seen this before, and I knew that there was nothing I could do. But EJ was all in the head. There was no template for how the mind should be. There was no genetic code for consciousness. I couldn''t reconstruct him into the person he used to be. I could only break down the person he was now so that he might grow to be something else. ¡°Dr Parlow, should we give him the relaxers now?¡± One of the residents asked. He was new to the actual practice but talented enough. ¡°No, it''s too early. We have to give time for the memory to settle in, otherwise, there''s a chance it won''t have the desired effect.¡± I hated how cold my voice sounded. I sometimes wished I could cry and mourn. I had seen this a hundred times before and I''d probably see it another hundred more, and each time it was awful. But feelings were useless now. The only thing that was actually useful was logic. You learned that pretty early on in this field. I had once seen someone give relaxers too soon. The patient then went on to relapse on EJ and became unwilling to engage in treatment. With EJ, the trauma was the cure. And nobody would ever drink Hell Juice, fully knowing what it was. After a certain amount of time, we applied the relaxers. Then, after about an hour, I left the room. This wing specifically was reserved for EJ treatment, and every patient was either screaming in horror or silent for days on end. You''d pass by a room with a patient staring out into the distance, eyes dead, barely remembering to blink. Then you would pass by a room with a person screaming in horrible gibberish. Sometimes, you''d see them talking, eating, and walking if they were near the end of their stay. But you would never see them smiling. They would be set up for regular psych evals for the next six months and be put on hard antidepressants, and they would eventually get to baseline, but it was a long journey to recovery. I walked faster. That was my last patient of the day, after an hour or so of paperwork I went to my locker, gathered my stuff and drove home. Being a doctor was my day job. It paid well enough but that wasn''t the reason I did it. Days like this almost made me forget why I did it. But everyone was trained on EJ treatment and regardless of your specialization you were bound to work a few shifts there one way or another. It was part of my obligations, at least in this hospital. I put on my AR glasses and opened up my blackline. I had numerous messages coming through, about thirty different responses. Some of them were from heroes but most of them came from vigilantes and villains. I sighed and started sorting through them. Of the villains, there were about five I was willing to heal. Of the vigilantes, there were about seven. Being a biomancer had its perks. If I had signed up with the Union or capitalized on my skills in the private sector, I could easily be making millions a year. But that wasn''t why I did this. In a way it was a numbers game, just not with money. I wanted to fix as many people as I could. And the best access to that would be in a general hospital. Someone would come in for neck pain, and I would sense a tumorous mass in the leg and tell it to die before they even knew what hit them. I could ease pain and free people from chronic illnesses, and it lined up with my power¡¯s requirements. You couldn''t just go commanding flesh to do whatever you wanted. You had to know how it was supposed to work and only then could you control it in a way to induce healing. I was just about to close the black line account when one new request popped in. The Crow: Damaged nerve in left leg. No genetics or blood drawn, can you heal for $50,000? That was cheap. Many wishers avoid regular hospitals to prevent giving away their genetic material. If you lost any blood someone could look you up in the database and probably find your identity, if not your relatives. So healers who could fix somebody without drawing any blood were in high demand. And that was what I did. I looked him up real quick. It took me about three minutes to actually find an article that mentioned him, and even then they weren''t sure if he was an actual vig or a made up story. But he wasn''t involved in anything shady from what I could find, so I decided to add him to the list. Sure. I will set a specific time and location. Leave a window clear for Tuesday next week from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Chapter 13 Flying was one of the best superhero experiences. You could float through the sky, touch small parts of the world, free and uninterrupted. More than airplanes or helicopters, freehand flying meant an experience of the world that was rivaled by almost nothing. That was until somebody shot at you; then you learned the dangers of the air. In terms of combat style, I was a float-there-and-shoot kind of guy. Over the years I had learned about the dangers of that combat style, mainly the floating part. While my suit could keep me in the air for a little over two days, it was lacking in maneuverability. Limitations were arguably the most important part of any wisher¡¯s abilities. Relying on what you could do was easy, but knowing what you couldn¡¯t and how to get around or compensate for those weaknesses was a talent all its own. My major limitation was money. A tinker was the ideal thing to become if you wanted to be respected and powerful in modern society, not so if you wanted to bea superhero. I could endlessly upgrade my tech to near Major C levels of power, but that would require millions. I opened the airlock system within my suit. If there was one thing I had, it was redundancy. I had layers of protection protocols installed into this thing, including its own oxygen filtration and storage system. I was just a fat bird and lacked agility, but that meant that I could shove a bunch of stuff onto this suit. But there was no need for that right now. Now it was just basic patrol. I looked through the clear visor and felt the wind against my skin. It was cold. The type of cold that dried out your sweat and left you feeling refreshed. This was the best part about being a wisher. These moments of inhuman power. The suit was controlled through a device that read my mind. It was like what Mochi had for her robot hands but much less precise. I floated up to the sky, about ten thousand feet up, and just sat there. Some people read books, others knitted, and some socialized. But this was what I liked to do. It never got old, being this high and floating on top of the world. You imagined flying all the time as a kid, but doing it was something else entirely. And here I was, flying high above the city. There was a static hum before someone spoke in my ear. ¡°Sir, this is Air Traffic Control; you aren¡¯t legally allowed to be this¡ª¡± ¡°I have a license to fly and am watching out for airplanes in the region. Sending you my certifications.¡± And there goes my magic moment. I sighed and flew around. You still needed to watch out for Air Traffic Control. Lots of stuff happened through air traffic, especially over busy cities like this one. It had been a big deal at first, people just flying around unmanaged and unknown. But there quickly became an anonymous license you could get via the Hero''s Union, and suddenly people floating in the sky became another manageable thing. I was a pedestrian of the sky, and the flying police didn¡¯t like it when I jaywalked. Drones were the more regulated thing. In theory, the city was perfectly capable of constant monitoring of the entire population via drones and CCTV. But that was illegal, and merely owning drones required a special permit. If you wanted to operate them without a permit, you had to keep them within a quarter mile of you, or you had to be sending them to a place without having a clear view of the journey there. Those were for delivery drones or even media drones that might go to a site before the people could arrive there. But those rules were a lot more flexible. Corporations weren¡¯t allowed to break them, but random vigs like me who hadn¡¯t proved themselves to be a threat to the people¡¯s privacy, well, we were given much leeway. Besides, any smart super had a drone-detecting device. It functioned via sonar, radar, and radio detection and was mostly reliable in most places. You could also buy a stationary one as well, and most businesses had them. Then they would communicate with each other and ping the locations of any drones to one another within a certain area. And if an unfamiliar drone was following you, you could call the police, and they would have their drones chase them down. It was all very convoluted. Cameras of any kind were heavily regulated as well. But the point was that there was a web of Laws designed to ensure privacy while protecting it. And while it wasn¡¯t too clear on what was and wasn¡¯t illegal, the general sentiment of privacy was heavily looked after in the courts. Flying a drone out on the cityscape and taking a time lapse? A fine maybe, if you get caught. Tracking a hero through the streets? A larger fine with jail time and being banned from owning drones in the future. I slowly came down on my rooftop. There were no cameras up here, and I myself had a state-of-the-art drone detection device installed onto my rooftop. It was disguised and squared through the black market. And since I used my stealth mode and went out only at night, I was pretty sure that no one would notice me. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Unless someone was looking. Of course I had methods of leaving in case someone was looking as well. I had my own delivery drone that I could send to pick me up along with my suit at any location. But that was for extreme cases. I unequipped my suit and picked up my cane. Mochi wasn¡¯t there to greet me this time, but Kimber did rub up against my legs. I loved the cat, but as a man with a cane, it could be hard to walk forward when I had to look at every step as a possible act of animal cruelty. ¡°Shoo,¡± I waved, pushing aside the cat with my cane. ¡°Give me a second; I¡¯ll let you later, alright?¡± The cat trilled and ignored me. After about thirty seconds of careful stepping, I was able to get into my bathroom and lock the cat out. He was a very affectionate guy, and normally, Mochi was more than willing to provide that affection, but she was busy tonight. I showered and dressed comfortably before stumbling my way into Mochi¡¯s room. There she had a bed, her choice of wet dog food with an automatic food dispenser. A dog toilet I had bought off of Tuxedo and a whole host of chew toys, snacks, and computers. Mochi was centered in a chair. It was a rolling chair, one that I had upgraded for her birthday. It wheeled around automatically based on Mochi¡¯s input and had a special place for her to rest her tummy on while still being able to face the computer. That was what Mochi was doing now. ¡°Monkeybuns, I need you to stand back and heal! Stop engaging with the boss; you will get an ever share of the experience regardless! And DaVinciSLover, YOU ARE A RANGED ATTACKER! STAY BACK AND ATTACK FROM A DISTANCE. WE WILL NOT BE WASTING RESURRECTION POTIONS ON YOUR STUPID ASS, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?¡± I peeked over Mochi¡¯s angry little head. Mochi was a dog, but in a strange way, she was also a person. She needed to socialize and make friends, but she didn¡¯t want to be locked away in some facility for the rest of her life, so this was her compromise. MMORPGs. She played a lot of them, but she mainly played this one. The Eternal Nine. She was a guild leader and a constant presence in the leaderboard of best players, constantly reaching the top fifty and never leaving the top seventy-five. And when Mochi played, all semblance of gentle, childish joy went out the window. ¡°KILL THEM ALL! IF A SINGLE GOBMITE GETS PAST YOU, THEY WILL START BREEDING AND RESPAWNING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DUNGEON! AND THAT DOES NOT INCREASE EXPERIENCE, PEOPLE. THOSE THINGS ONLY GIVE FIVE EXPERIENCES EACH; A THOUSAND OF THEM WOULDN¡¯T HELP YOU GET A PERCENTAGE OF MORE EXPERIENCE! JUST GO FOR THE GOBMOTHER; SHE¡¯S THE BOSS!¡± I gave her a pat on the head, which she leaned into for a moment before yelling. ¡°I WILL FIND YOU, DAVINCISLOVER. I WILL FIND YOU AND CHOKE YOU WITH THE MONA LISA UNLESS YOU ATTACK FROM A RANGE AND STOP GOING IN HEADFIRST!¡± I slowly walked out of the room and went over to the living room. I sat on the bed, reclined the chair, and took out a pill. It was a painkiller, one that was becoming less effective by the day. I turned on the TV, and Kimber popped himself onto my lap. Distantly vague yelling came from Mochi, and the sound of rain pattering against my roof started to mix in with it. I turned up the volume and watched the news. A guy with gelled hair and a blinding smile came on. ¡°The Grand Spin is coming up, as you know, and will be held in Oak City this year. The number of people planning to attend, along with the current Oak Stadium having to expand to fit those numbers, is still a problem with many folks here in the city, and¡ª I switched the channel. A crisp movie came on. There were a bunch of people, an old detective, and a guy looking around in distress. ¡°I¡¯m telling you, I didn¡¯t do it! Look, it couldn¡¯t have been me. I was down at Abby¡¯s house when it happened. Do you know how far away that is?¡± I left it on. It started to thunder outside, and the warm glow of the TV seemed to have to fight with the occasional burst of lightning. It was daytime right now, but the clouds made it seem like it was near evening. That with the rain blowing and the wind made it very low visibility. Oh well, our windows were reflective, and we kept them closed anyways. We could risk someone seeing Mochi walking around and talking. The show was interesting, if a bit predictable. And I kept watching for about an hour or so before Mochi came in and plopped down onto the couch. ¡°How was the raid?¡± ¡°It was good!¡± She chirped. ¡°I banned some people from the guild, though, and PKed them to get back guild materials.¡± ¡°DavincisLover?¡± I asked. ¡°No, he¡¯s actually decent. Just some leeches who refused to use their allocated items at the proper times.¡± I nodded. Mochi was ruthless when it came to video games. I had tried to play with her once, but¡­ I then decided not to. We still played RPGs together, she handling the combat and me handling the storylines and decision-making. But multiplayer games were a sore point for her. ¡°Burt,¡± Mochi said, hind leg scratching roughly at her neck. ¡°Yeah.¡± ¡°When are you going to get a girlfriend?¡± I looked at the dog. She said it so innocently, as if she was asking about the weather. And it was all genuine. ¡°What brings this up?¡± I asked. ¡°Well, you know about the guild, right? Sometimes we talk, and I say, You¡¯re my older brother, right? And they told me that a guy that old should be out having a job, not moping around the house all day. And they said that at this age, I should encourage you to get a girlfriend, or a boyfriend if that¡¯s what you¡¯re into¡ª¡± ¡°Mochi,¡± I cut in. ¡°But it¡¯s been years, you know! And you have to move forward at some point, Burt, I mean.¡± She sighed and cuddled up under my arm. ¡°It¡¯s not healthy, you know. I was on a forum, and it said¡ª¡± ¡°What forum?¡± ¡°A forum where concerned people get together to talk about their antisocial acquaintances of varying ages.¡± ¡°A mom forum?¡± Mochi stared off to the side and put her ears down flat. Then she whined. ¡°Mochi, you don¡¯t need to mother me.¡± ¡°I know, but you don¡¯t have friends! I¡¯m a dog, and I feel like I have more friends than you do, and sometimes I wonder if it''s because of me and¡ª¡± ¡°Why would it be because of you?¡± ¡°Well, you are hiding me, and maybe you¡¯re afraid that if you get a friend or a girlfriend, it¡¯ll limit my freedom, and maybe that¡¯s why¡ª¡± I grabbed her snout. ¡°You know I hate getting sentimental, right?¡± Mochi nodded, his snout still grabbed by my hands. ¡°My need to be alone has nothing to do with you, understand?¡± She shook her head. ¡°I just don¡¯t trust people, Mochi. It''s that simple.¡± She shook my hand off her snout and put her head on my lap. She was panting slightly, and her eyes still held a look of guilt. ¡°It wasn¡¯t just the breakup or the cheating. It was everything else. They all just chose their side, and it felt like I was just expected to accept that. Look, I understand that it''s not the best place to be, but I¡¯ve been alone for a while now. I¡¯m used to not talking to people. It''s fine.¡± Her tail thumped the couch cushion in defiance. ¡°It''s normal. And I don¡¯t need you worrying about me while you¡¯re still chasing off the mailman and feeling threatened by the doorbell.¡± Mochi nodded, and I gave her a belly scratch. She was strange. She was smart, probably smarter than most humans, but she was still a puppy. She wasn¡¯t a kid. She could devour a psychology textbook with no problem, and she even earned her own money through various means online. Sometimes I worried about all of that, but for now, she was just a dog. A dog that would psychoanalyze her person''s state of mind and try to better his behavior for it, but still a dog. Just a very smart puppy concerned about their human. I felt bad about it. Sometimes I wondered if the only reason I trusted her was because she was a dog. I certainly wouldn¡¯t trust a human. I ignored the thought and just kept petting her, and we both drifted off to sleep covered in the TV light.